


Red Thread

by Vulcanodon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Eventual Romance, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Sleeping Beauty Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:20:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulcanodon/pseuds/Vulcanodon
Summary: "Under three feet of solid ice and nestled tightly in dark roots, it was impossible to tell whether Steve was dead or sleeping. The ice could have been glass it was so transparent, and Bucky could see faint traces of pink on Steve’s nose and cheeks. His eyes were shut, and he was completely and utterly still.  There was no possible way that a human could still be alive. But Steve was more than human. And besides, he had survived it before."Steve Rogers is missing, his last known location a seemingly abandoned little town known as White Oaks. When all attempts to find him fail, Natasha Romanov calls in the services of the Winter Soldier.  Until now Bucky Barnes has been lying low in New York and trying slowly to piece together the shattered fragments of his identity. But in order to bring Steve back, Bucky will have to face not only the darkness that lies beneath the placid surface of White Oaks but stay one step ahead of his own demons...
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 68
Kudos: 154





	1. America's Nostalgia Capital

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this just after seeing the Winter Soldier for the first time back in 2014. I wrote about the first half and then set it aside for the next six years. Now that I've started getting back into writing fanfiction, I thought I might dust it off and see if anyone was interested rather than let it rot away in my old files. My style has changed a lot since I first started writing this and of course, after the events of The Winter Soldier it's not really canon compliant in any way. I'm still very fond of it though, as it was my first exploration of horror infused fan fiction. Anyway, thank you for reading and tell me what you think below!

_A labyrinth is not a maze. A maze is a game, a puzzle to be unlocked with many twisting turns, dead ends, traps, entrances and exits._

_A labyrinth has a single entrance and a path that winds to an inevitable center. There is only one way into a labyrinth._

_There is only one way out._

* * *

Romanova was the one to tell him in the end. Bucky didn’t know how she’d got the number and he didn’t ask. It was the first time the telephone had rung in his unobtrusive and empty downtown apartment and in another lifetime the sound would have startled him. When answered the phone, her voice wasn’t breaking but its tight control was almost painful to hear.

“He's gone. We can't find him,” she had said and just like that, everything changed.

Bucky hadn’t said anything but she’d continued anyway.

“There’s a small town in North Carolina. White Oaks, “ Romanova had said. “ We can’t…we can’t go in after him. “

“Can’t?” Bucky had rasped.

“I’ll meet you tomorrow at 12. Riverside Bistro in New Hope. It’s close,” she had said and then hung up.

She didn’t ask him if he’d come, or whether he could make it in time. She didn’t have to.

The last time Bucky had seen Steve they had sat on a rooftop in the early evening sunlight. Steve had brought rye and swiss sandwiches in a brown paper bag and Bucky had eaten messily and quickly, one eye on the nearest exit route. Steve hadn’t been in uniform and his face had the same tired expression as always, but he had tried to smile anyway. It made him a little hard too look at directly; too much unwelcome emotion muddied Bucky’s mind every time he tried. As usual, it been Steve doing most of the talking. He asked a lot of questions.

( _How are you doing? I’m still not used to the city. Have you been eating? I bought a banana the other day, tasted wrong. I think I’m going crazy sometimes with all the bright lights. When are you coming home?)_

Bucky had wanted to laugh and brush Steve off, tell him to stop being such a mother hen. The Winter Soldier had wanted to drive a knife in between his ribs, smash his head against the concrete, cut off his airways until his brain starved of oxygen.

Bucky had only stayed long enough to get a small taste of the sound of Steve’s voice, the sight of his face. He had left before his control broke. 

That had been last Thursday. It was Monday now and Steve Rogers was missing.

* * *

It took Bucky a little over 12 hours to drive down to North Carolina, stopping only to fill up at service stations. He’s driving an old beat up truck, bought with cash from a stone-faced dealer in New York. Unobtrusive. Sturdy. It’s a long drive but he was by now adept at the art of turning off part of his mind, allowing himself to slip into the soothing routine of driving. He didn’t get tired; he barely slept these days, anyway. When he did it was lightly and for brief hours at a time.

Bucky had spent too much time unconscious over the last few decades to make sleep welcoming. 

It had been easy to leave the apartment. Bucky had been living in it for weeks now with a packed bag ready by the door. It wasn’t a bad apartment though; maybe one of the nicer bolt holes he’s crawled into over the years. Steve didn’t know about it, although the money came from him.

Bucky hadn’t wanted to take it, the thick envelopes that Steve brought every time they met. Hadn’t wanted to take anything from him, only barely able to be around him at the start. Still half itching out of his skin to retreat to the rooftops and crowds, to watch only from a distance. Steve had insisted though, eyes wide and pleading but jaw set. Bucky had other ways of making money, both of them knew that.

_It’s not like I have much else to do with it anyway,_ Steve had said, _It’s a hell of a lot different to living here as a kid Buck. It took a long time for it to seem like real cash._

He’d looked sad then, in the way he always did when he slipped up and confused Bucky with the guy he used to know. And Bucky had so desperately wanted to make him stop looking sad, to be the Bucky Steve remembered, that he had taken the envelope. He knew Steve wanted to take care of him. It was almost funny, considering how he had taken care of Steve as a kid. Sometimes those memories felt so real; like they were his own and not a stranger’s.

The Winter Soldier didn’t understand the hesitation. The last time he had been offered cash was by a woman in tears with a gun to her head.

The apartment was small and cramped and was a place to regroup, sleep and eat. You could see the entire street from the window though, and at night the sounds of the neighborhood drifted up to where Bucky would sit and watch in the dark. His fingers itched with memory sometimes, the phantom smell of cigarette smoke hanging around him.

Before leaving, he had gone to the box under the bed, taken out the duffel bag inside and laid out its contents on the floor. He made a quick inventory of the contents; the suit with its leather boots, the guns, the ammo, the knives. He had checked them all over, making sure that they were clean and operational before tucking them back into the bag. The suit had still smelt of water from the fall. 

Bucky didn’t know why he kept them. Except maybe that’s not completely true. Better to _say_ he didn’t want to know why he kept them. The truth was, the Winter Soldier wouldn’t let him throw them away.

The bag sat in the passenger seat beside him all through the long drive to North Carolina. If a cop pulled him over he could have a knife in his hand in five seconds.

Bucky was careful to keep to the speed limit.

He reached New Hope with two hours to spare. The place wasn’t small but most of the buildings had FOR SALE signs posted on the lawns and in the windows. Bucky saw maybe two people in the streets as he drove into the center of town and they were walking hurriedly, heads down. It was summer and the air was humid and close when he parked the truck down a back street. The sky was uncomfortably blue and empty above him.

He knew there was a strong possibility he might be walking into a trap.

He trusted Steve and Romanova as much as he could allow himself to trust anyone, but more than one organization was looking for him, even with S.H.I.E.L.D dismantled. He had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be taken down the instant he stepped into the bistro and the Winter Soldier was unsettled and twitchy at the uncertainty. Bucky could fight his way out if it came to it. Depending on whether they wanted him alive or not. Not much way to prepare for a sniper rifle aimed at the back of his head.

Bucky knew he was going to walk in though, trap or not. There was no real question there. Bucky would walk into a lot of traps for Steve, dragging the Winter Soldier along by force if necessary. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d walked into the belly of the beast for Steve. 

_With Steve_.

He checked the place over anyway; scouted out the surrounding rooftops, the people coming in and out. At 11:45 Romanova walked around the corner, the flash of her red hair bright in the midday sun. She wore a tan trench coat despite the heat, and Bucky wondered how many weapons she had concealed beneath it. Maybe none- Bucky knew from painful experience just how little she needed to rely on them.

He waited until 12 before crossing the street and pushing open the door.

The bistro was tacky and cheap, with peeling paint and linoleum floors. A thin-faced woman behind a counter looked up with a wary expression when Bucky opened the door. She looked as if she was deciding whether or not he was a threat. Bucky realized how suspicious he must look, baseball cap drawn low and hands tucked into his bulky jacket. He nodded at her awkwardly and she gave him a hesitant smile.

Romanova was waiting for him in a booth by the window, a cup of coffee, untouched in front of her. She didn’t raise her head to look at him as he crossed the room and sat down opposite her, but Bucky wasn’t stupid enough to think that she wasn’t tracking his every movement carefully.

She looked tightly held together, back straight and stiffly upright. Professional as always. Her only tell was her bottom lip, red as if from being bitten. Bucky knew she and Steve were close. His chest felt suddenly too tight. Whatever had happened to Steve, it was bad. 

“Hello Barnes,” Romanova said lightly.

“Romanova, ” he replied. There was a brief flash of something, maybe pain, behind her eyes before the mask slid down. Bucky’s memory was a cloudy glass at best but he knew there was history between them, even if it was lost to him now. Another thing Hydra took away. He doesn’t know what, _who_ , he was to her, but he can guess from the occasional looks she gives him and his lingering, instinctive sense of protectiveness towards her.

One more person he couldn’t be anymore.

“What happened?” he asked. 

Romanova glanced down at the table and traced her finger around the edges of her coffee mug. 

“We only found out he was gone when he didn’t turn up to a meeting,” she began, sounding as if she was picking her words carefully. “No note, no phone messages. We tracked him to New Hope. From what we can work out, Steve arrived here three days ago. He had lunch here in this diner, stayed in a hotel one night and then…disappeared. There’s a town just south of here. White Oaks. We think he went there.“

She paused and gave him a considering glance.

“Why?” he asked.

They were interrupted by the waitress; whose helpful perkiness seemed a little forced. Bucky resisted the urge to snap at her to go away. Romanova ordered him a coffee, ignoring his dark look.

“Breathe, Barnes,” she reminded him when the waitress moved away. Her voice was cool but her fingers twitched slightly and Bucky knew she could have her gun out in seconds flat.

Romanova continued in the same soft, even voice.

“Before dropping off the map Steve talked to two different people in town about travelling to White Oaks. This was on Saturday. And that’s where things go wrong. The problem is, White Oaks is empty. Abandoned. Just another little ghost town, barely two streets wide. Steve wasn’t, _isn’t_ there. “

“Then where the hell is he?” Bucky asked, frowning.

Romanova let out a small sigh and the corner of her mouth twitched downward.

“The others think he must have been taken somewhere. Or left himself and just hasn’t been in touch yet,” Romanova said.

“But you don’t think that.”

Her eyes met his with a stubborn sort of defiance that reminded Bucky, with a pang, of Steve as a kid, mouthing off to yet another jackass.

“He left me a message on my cell. _I’ve found something in White Oaks. Tell the others. It goes deeper than I thought. “_

The words had a strange weight to them and Bucky felt a prickling on the back of his neck.

Romanova leant forward, eyes locked on his.   
  
“He’s still in there, Barnes. The others they…we looked everywhere. But they want to move on. They think it’s a dead end. If Steve is in there, wherever _there_ is, then we can’t reach him. But you might be able to.”

At this point the waitress bustled back with two steaming mugs of coffee. Romanova and Bucky stayed silent until she walked out of earshot.

Bucky swallowed and his throat was suddenly too dry.

“Why do you think _I’ll_ find him? Isn’t your team made up of gods and geniuses?” he asked.

“Because I know you won’t stop until you do,” she said simply and leant back. “He’s your mission. And believe me, you and I both know what that means.”

Bucky stiffened and he nodded jerkily. 

Romanova slid a slim black phone onto the table, a new model that looked insanely expensive.

“I’ll be going with the others but keep this on you,” she said, suddenly businesslike. “Stark modified it so it probably has better than average reception.”

Bucky didn’t move to pick it up.

“I don’t like carrying tracking devices,” he said flatly.

Annoyance flashed over her face.

“And I don’t like sending you in there on your own Jame-…Barnes,” she snapped. “Take the damn cell. You want to go in there blind? ”

Bucky took the cell.

“There’s one other thing,” Romanova said, and she looked suddenly very tired.

She took a blue sketchbook out of her bag and placed it on the table between them. 

“It’s-“ she began.

“Steve’s. I know,” Bucky finished roughly. His eyes are fixed on the book, lying innocently on the table.

“It was in his hotel room. He wouldn’t…I don’t think he’d leave it,” she said, voice suddenly very quiet.

Bucky looked at her, the dark sweep of her eyelashes as she stared at the tattered book. He put his non-metal hand on the book, careful not to move too suddenly. Their fingers were almost close enough to touch.

“I’ll find him Natalia. I promise.”

Romanova nodded shortly and stood up, leaving a few bills on the table.

“Good luck,” she said shortly. “Keep me updated.”

Bucky watched her leave, the strong, set lines of her shoulders and the warm glow of her hair under the bright bistro lighting. He looked back out the window in time to see Sam Wilson move away from his spot on the rooftop opposite. He almost smiled. Romanova doesn’t need it but he feels more secure knowing there’s someone watching her back.

He drank the rest of his coffee. It was hot and a little bitter and better with sugar, he decided and it felt good to think. He’d been trying to train himself to taste his food. He wondered if Bucky Barnes liked sugar in his coffee. He’ll ask Steve when he finds him, Bucky decided. And he will find him.

He realized he’d been staring at Steve’s sketchbook on the table in front of him and he tucked it into his inner jacket pocket. As he got up to leave, the waitress called out a goodbye. 

“Come again soon honey.” she said, smiling. She had a nametag that read _Lucy._

Bucky tried to smile.

“Just passing through,” he said.

“I guessed from you and your friend. What was that language you were speaking? Polish?”

Bucky blinked. He hadn’t realized they weren’t speaking English. 

“Russian,” he corrected her and she smiled and nodded.

“I thought that could be it,” she said cheerfully. “Well you have a good day now.”

Bucky forced another smile and left, trying to ignore the Winter Soldier telling him to leave no witnesses.

* * *

Neither Bucky nor the Winter Soldier liked the forest. The Winter Soldier hated it for the difficult terrain, lack of vantage points and general low visibility. For Bucky the tall trees and silence is far too close to Germany, to the dark ocean of fir trees that had surrounded Zola’s lab. Both were made for the city, for the fire escapes and rooftops and dripping back alleys. 

The drive from New Hope was progressively more densely forested the further they went, the trees growing taller and greater as the empty road was swallowed up. It felt almost like sinking, being pulled under the surface as the sky shrunk above him. Every part of Bucky wanted to turn around and drive as fast and as far away as possible. 

The way to White Oaks hadn’t been clear. Romanova had said it would be to the south but he had come across no road signs so far and he was beginning to get twitchy. He had been driving along the main road for around an hour now and he was already disorientated. There was nothing but tangled branches and the dark belt of road stretching out in front of him. It had been a long time since the last distinguishing feature, an old sign advertising _All American Hot Dogs_ , tattered by the weather.

He let his mind drift back to the last time he had eaten hot dogs, sharp with mustard and pickles in little paper wrappings that had done nothing to stop grease from covering his hands. Steve had left them for him in a subway station near Fifth Avenue. That had been in the early days when Bucky had been still half feral; out of his mind, torn between protocol and rapidly returning memories.

Bucky hadn’t trusted himself with Steve, waiting ‘til he was gone before reaching for the food. It had tasted unbelievably good, the first food in weeks not eaten from cold cans. He had sat there in the nearly empty subway station, hearing the intercom buzz above him, feeling the warmth spreading through his chest.

Bucky almost didn’t see the figure on the road until it was too late.

There was a spilt second where their eyes met and Bucky felt his stomach roll and his mouth gasp open. Then the Winter Soldier took over and wrenched the steering wheel to the right. The car swerved with seconds to spare. He hit the brakes with an unholy screech of protesting machinery, but the car was going too fast, the turn was too sharp, and the car slid out of control, off the road and burst through the line of trees.

He would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the sharp drop hidden by the branches. Bucky had a brief, crystal clear view of the fall beneath him, each twig and leaf detailed and distinct, the ground far below. Then the car tipped, something came smashing through the windshield and, like a television screen suddenly switched off, the world went dark.

* * *

Bucky woke up to sunlight in his face and the sound of birds. Looking up he could see the sky, framed by the dark outlines of branches; the sunlight that filtered down was faintly golden. He blinked and then he felt the sharp shooting pain coming from his ankle and the low dull ache in his head. He raised his metal hand to the wetness on his head and when he pulled it away the bright metal was smeared with blood.

He let his head fall back, shut his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing. He waited for the memories to fall into place.

_Your name is Bucky Barnes. You are in control. You are in North Carolina. You are looking for Steve Rogers._

Bucky opened his eyes and took his first look at the ruin of the truck, steaming a few yards away. He must have been thrown in the crash.

There was no hope of salvaging it- that much was immediately obvious. The front bender was wrapped around a large oak tree, steam rising lazily from the crushed remains of the hood. As he staggered to his feet, Bucky glanced up at the ragged path the truck had ripped through the trees on its descent. It wasn’t far to the road, maybe 500 yards at most but it was a near straight drop. 

He checked himself over for injuries, with the ease that came of years of practice. The worst pain came from his ankle, but Bucky judged it to be only sprained, not broken. He was bleeding from the head as well, a shallow cut on his temple but he wasn’t too worried. Head wounds always bled excessively. It wouldn’t take too long to heal. It never did, even with far more severe injuries. He probably wouldn’t even scar. Experience told him it took cuts a lot deeper than that to make a lasting impression. 

There was a small path just little further down through the trees, presumably for walkers. Bucky decided to take his chances on that rather than trying to struggle back up the cliff with a heavy bag and an injured ankle. The path would lead to the road eventually. From there he could hitchhike to White Oaks, or walk. He limped over to the car and peered inside for his bag. It was still there, seemingly untouched by the crash. Bucky reached in through the twisted wreck of the window and pulled it out.

As he did so, a flash of red in the corner of his vision caught his attention.

Hanging from the rear view mirror was an empty long-range shell casing. It dangled by a short length of red thread and was tied with a delicate bow. Bucky felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Had someone come here while he’d been unconscious?

_Perhaps you tied it there,_ a voice niggled in the back of his mind. _It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve forgotten something you did._

Prodding at the memory of the car crash was like feeling around for a missing tooth. If there was something there then Bucky couldn’t see it through the mist.

_Are you sure it’s even real?_ the voice wheedled. _After what you saw on the road?_

Bucky decided to leave. He had to get to Steve. He didn’t have time for dealing with his fucked-up mess of a brain right now. The sooner he was back on track the better. He checked his jacket pockets before he left. Romanova’s phone was still miraculously intact, and Steve’s sketchbook was untouched in his pocket. He tied his hair up in a ponytail to keep it out of the blood and set off.

The trail was rough going on his ankle but he upped his pace, the bag slung over his shoulder. He was punishing himself to a certain extent he knew. He was angry at the crash, the waste of time, angry at himself for losing control.

He was beginning to think he must have imagined the figure on the road. He _must_ have imagined it, a momentary hallucination. He hadn’t slept in a while and that could mess with your head.

Because that couldn’t have been Steve.

Steve didn’t even look like that anymore, small and frail and desperately breakable. It must have been some other hopeless hitchhiker, someone who Bucky’s mess of a brain had projected Steve’s face onto in a moment of madness. Some other little blond kid who needed feeding up.

The eyes had been Steve’s though; Bucky couldn’t deny that, so goddamn blue and angry, the look he had for when something really pissed him off. That same pig headed, self- righteous look of contempt so recklessly out of place on his scrawny body. Bucky had seen that look directed at countless assholes on the street, playground bullies, but never at Bucky. Even on the helicarrier, when Bucky had felt something in Steve’s jaw crunch as Bucky’s fist connected. Steve had just looked calm, almost accepting. Like he deserved it.

This was not a good day to go insane, Bucky decided. Not until he found Steve at least.

The trail widened out after a while but still didn’t seem to head towards the main road. Bucky was beginning to regret his decision not to climb the slope. He’s not sure how long he was out for. It had been a little after two when he crashed, he estimated, but the sun was much lower in the sky now and the air was beginning to chill. The truck had fallen far behind.

It was just as he was considering leaving the path and trekking through the woods that he came to a road. It was a dirt track but large and there were fairly recent marks on its surface that gave Bucky hope. It was a palpable feeling of relief to step out from under the shadow of the trees. 

He walked for about another twenty minutes before he came to a signpost. It was a simple roadside marker, not very large and the paint was flaky and weatherworn.

_YOU ARE FIVE MILES FROM WHITE OAKS_ It read in a cursive. Below it in smaller letters were the words: _AMERICA’S NOSTAGIA CAPITAL!_

It was surprising to say the least. Bucky wasn’t expecting to find White Oaks this close. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he’s been thrown off by the crash but he’s fairly confident this is the wrong direction.

But it means he’s closer to Steve than ever.

He set off again, faster, not allowing himself to wince at the pain in his ankle. Something about the sign lingers in his mind.

_America’s Nostalgia Capital._

It seems a little strange. Not particularly comforting. Then again, it’s not like Bucky ever spent much time around these sorts of places, born and bred in the city. The only small towns he had ever been around, the names had for the most part been in German or French. 

The road seemed to go on far longer than it should have, the same wide road and endless, darkening trees. Bucky had almost convinced himself he had taken a wrong turn when the road suddenly dropped off and all at once the town of White Oaks stretched out beneath him.

The town lay in a valley, a long scoop out of the ground that stretched on for another couple of miles before him. Spilling down the valley sides was the forest, very dark now and seemingly endless. The town looked poised on the edge of being completely swallowed up; the handful of white clapboard houses a weak line of defense. 

Romanova hadn’t been exaggerating. It was a tiny place, maybe two, three streets. From here Bucky could see a few, larger structures, a small café and what looked like a cinema but, as expected, they looked empty and abandoned. On the opposing valley wall a large white house overlooked the town. The picture windows were dark and hollow and watching them Bucky got an uncomfortable prickle at the back of his neck.

The Winter Soldier was telling him to get in cover, out of the line of sight. 

The sun was very low in the sky now and below the golden horizon of the forest a shadow was beginning to creep over the town. Bucky didn’t want to give up his vantage point but the town was down in the valley and somewhere in that town was Steve. 

It was halfway down the winding road when Bucky found the glove. It was lying in the center of the road, the blue fingers awkwardly gesturing up toward the sky. There was an awful jarring second in which Bucky was half convinced there was still a hand inside and his heart juddered painfully in his throat before he stumbled closer and realized that it was empty. Empty yes but horribly obviously and without a doubt _Steve’s_.

It was Steve’s glove _and how had the others missed this?_

He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, head bowed, in the center of the empty road. Bucky wanted to believe that it could have been an accident, could have slipped from Steve’s hand somehow. He tried to convince himself there could have been any number of reasons why it was lying abandoned outside a dead town.

But the Winter Soldier knew what this was, knew the tactic. Someone was laying a path. This was just a breadcrumb. If the others hadn’t found anything with all of Stark’s technology and the magic of an Asgardian god then there was no way in hell they would have missed this. Somebody had left this for Bucky to find.

Bucky very carefully placed the glove in his jacket pocket alongside the sketchbook. Then he started walking again, a little faster. There was a low level anger beating below his skin. Someone was playing mind games and if there was one thing Bucky fucking _hated_ it was mind games. And if those games involved hurting Steve in any way then someone was about to bring a very specific type of hell to their door.

He reached the first house as night was setting in around him, a small place with a wraparound porch and a collapsed roof. _For Sale_ , a sign in the window read, _Contact Us Today For Your Dream Home!_

Behind it was what looked like the main street, a wide dusty road bordered by similarly abandoned buildings, most with broken windows or gaping holes for doors. There was a small gas station up ahead, a parked Chevy still rusting outside. It was getting harder to see now but Bucky could make out a large board inscribed with the words _Smile: You’ve Reached White Oaks!_

There was something scrawled or scratched into the wood below it but Bucky couldn’t make it out in the half-light.

Something flickered in the corner of his eye. He snapped around, hand reaching for the gun tucked into the back of his jeans.

There was nothing there. Almost nothing. The street was still empty but a light had come on in the gas station window, a faint yellow glow that spilt out from the shutters into the street. Bucky stiffened and scanned the windows for shadows. Romanova had said the place was abandoned. Was it possible there was still someone living here? Or even-

He didn’t let himself call out Steve’s name but his mouth was already half formed around the word. 

He moved toward the gas station cautiously, not pulling out his gun but keeping one hand close. The light from the window was warm and cast strange shadows on the cracked asphalt outside. As he grew closer he could hear faint tinny music coming from inside, a jaunty discordant song that tugged at the edges of Bucky’s memory.

He stood and listened in the shadows by the door, straining for the sounds of movement inside. Nothing but the faint warbling of the radio.

He pushed it open slowly, knowing that Steve wouldn’t be in there. Still hoping.

The room inside was empty and trashed. A shelf lay overturned on the dusty floor, it’s contents spread across the small room. A counter on the other side of the room had a thick layer of dust lying over its surface. An old cash register stood on it, gaping open. The light came from the single electric lantern next to it, casting an eerie light over the wreck of the room. A lit cigarette smoked in an ashtray.

Someone had been here maybe even moments before but where could they have gone? There was a single door in the back wall but a heavy metal padlock barred the way. It felt solid when Bucky moved over to test its handle.

Aside from the windows only other exit was the door Bucky had come in through. 

The music was louder now that he was inside, the female voices gratingly cheerful. Bucky had heard it before but for the love of God, he couldn’t remember where and the déjà vu was unsettling.

_-Don’t sit under that apple tree_

_With anyone else but me_

_Anyone else but me-_

It was coming from an old transistor radio, grey with dust, sitting beside the lantern. Bucky moved over and reached out to flick it off.

His hand faltered in mid air when he saw the drawing. It wasn’t much more than a rough sketch, done in hurried black pen. A street view of what looked like a small cinema, a movie poster propped outside. A small alleyway ran to the left, the opening shaded very dark. There were a few straggly trees on the pavement outside. There was a man in the ticket booth, handsome and young with a thin pencil moustache. He was grinning invitingly, his charisma apparent even in the few black lines of the drawing.

There was no signature at the bottom of the drawing but there was no doubt in Bucky’s mind that Steve had drawn this. 

For a second he felt frozen, clasping the drawing loosely with his metal hand, the radio suddenly deafening.

_DON’T SIT UNDER THAT APPLE TREE WITH ANYONE ELSE BUT ME, NO, N-_

The noise cut out suddenly when Bucky yanked the chord away from the wall. If anything the sudden silence was more oppressive than before. There was a strange ringing in his ears.

“Shit, Steve where are you?” he muttered at the drawing, flicking his eyes back to the doorway. It was truly dark outside now and Bucky had the unnerving feeling of being watched.

One edge of the paper was torn. Bucky’s suspicions were confirmed when he fumbled out the sketchbook from his jacket pocket. Flicking through it he saw what he had missed before: roughly a third of the first pages had been torn out. And not with the careful precision that Bucky remembered of Steve. The edges were jagged and gaping, a wound in the fabric of the neat blue book. 

_Had Steve done this? Is he leaving me clues?_ Bucky wondered. _Or is this just another breadcrumb for me to follow? If this isn’t Steve leaving these, then who is?_

He studied the drawing carefully again. This time he noticed the small street sign, in the corner. Memorial St. That had to mean something. Bucky was fucked if he knew what though.

Bucky didn’t want to leave the sketch behind so he tucked it carefully back into the sketchbook and placed it back in his pocket. Steve would like that, he thought. He was always precious with his art.

There was a display case of yellowed brochures on the other side of the room and one in particular caught Bucky’s eye. The words _Welcome To White Oaks!_ were written in a curling script over a picture of a smiling family standing next to a large building.Bucky couldn’t place the time period of the clothing but he could tell by the hemlines alone it wasn’t modern. 

Just how long had this place been abandoned for?

He picked it out carefully, the paper cracking when he unfolded it. On the other side of the brochure was a map of White Oaks, drawn in cartoonish bright colors. The place must have served as a tourist trap back in the day.

Bucky Barnes had visited a little seaside town with Steve once, back when they had been kids. The trip had been expensive, even travelling low cost as possible, but it had been worth it for the look on Steve’s face when they had seen the ocean. He had stared, not saying anything for the longest time before turning and smiling at Bucky, the grin nearly cracking his face in two.

“Whole lot different than the pictures, isn’t it?” he had said and Bucky had laughed.

“You disappointed?” he had said and Steve had just kept right on smiling.

Even now Bucky could barely remember the view. He could have painted a picture of Steve’s face though.

The town itself had been a little like this though, all phony Americana and souvenir shops. A lot less abandoned admittedly.

He wasn’t too surprised when he found Memorial St. listed on the map. Only a few blocks away from him.

_A breadcrumb after all._


	2. The Show Begins

He sent a message to Romanova before heading out into the dark.

_Found his glove. He’s still in here._

He didn’t mention the crash or what he had seen on the road. He didn’t mention the sketch either and he’s not entirely sure why not.

The reply is almost instantaneous.

_Do you need backup?_

He hesitated slightly before responding.

_Give me 42 hours._

If Bucky can’t find Steve by then, she’ll know what to do. The same goes for if Bucky doesn’t check in.

Bucky couldn’t help but feel that this; the glove, the sketch, even the strange old song on the radio, is somehow meant for him to find. As far as bait went, Steve was just about the only thing that could draw him into this trap. The others hadn’t found anything last time and Bucky sure as hell didn’t think that it had been down to incompetence.

As a last minute decision he took the lantern on the table. He had a small torch in his bag, tucked down among the boxes of ammo, but the lantern would give a better light.

There had been times when the Winter Soldier had done missions in pitch black, moving silently through lightless corridors and rooms of sleeping people. He had never needed a light to guide his way. Still technically didn’t.

But Bucky Barnes had never liked the dark all that much.

The air outside was cold and damp and already Bucky could feel the ends of his fingers tingling. There was a faint mist on the ground that parted in languid eddies around his feet. The temperature must have dropped drastically in the short time he was inside. He cursed quietly under his breath. Bucky really fucking hated being cold, hated it with an itchy, under the skin intensity. He could withstand a hell of a lot more of it than this though. He could already feel the metal arm cooling against his side.

He made his way down the street carefully. Even with the lantern he could barely pick out more than two meters in front of him. On either side the buildings were looming grey shapes, hemming him in. In theory it would be hard to get lost. He had studied the map before going and his sense of direction had always been accurate.

The Winter Soldier could find his way out of a snow-covered forest, blind, with his hands tied behind his back. That had been a bad mission.

But something about this place mixed things around and threw Bucky off guard. The street seemed to last forever, although it had looked like a short distance on the map. All he could see was the pavement in front of him, lit up by the lantern light. On every side the darkness grew closer, stifling and eerily silent.

His breathing began to sound very loud in his ears. That and the shuffle of his feet on the pavement were the only sounds that pierced the quiet.

He began to worry that he was lost. The turning on the left should have come up by now. How long had he been walking? It felt like hours. It felt like seconds.

It’s just as he decided to retrace his steps that he heard the shuffling.

At first, he thought he imagined it, but he stopped anyway and peered into the fog. That’s when he heard it the second time; a wheezing, dragging noise, coming from somewhere in the mist. Bucky froze and his gun was in his hand before he consciously decided to draw it. He tensed as the sound came again, closer this time, a low scratching accompanying it, as if someone was dragging themselves along the pavement by their fingernails. He turned just in time to see the…thing, pulling itself into the circle of light.

At first sight it almost looked like a bloody pile of clothes, a formless heap that twitched and shuffled as it inched painfully toward him. Then it raised its head and Bucky could only stagger back, repulsed, because it was human but _how could it still be moving_?

Half of its head was almost normal, the eyes and tapered nose contorted in pain but unscathed, complete. But the lower half of its head was _gone_ , a mass of blood and bone where the top row of teeth gaped uselessly at the space where the lower jaw would be. As Bucky staggered back, feeling the bile rise in his throat, the _thing_ looked up at him, one blue eye glinting in desperation. One hand stretched up to him, reaching out, asking him something. Through his horror, Bucky noticed the shine of a policeman’s badge.

Then against all logic, the thing was saying something, words pulled out painfully even through the mess of a face. The words were indistinct, impossible to make out and, fighting against every instinct that told him to run, Bucky knelt down closer. Up close he could see the white jawbone that jutted out through the mess of muscle and torn flesh.

“What is it?” Bucky asked, hearing the near hysteria in his voice. “Who did this to you?”

The thing, the dying man, beckoned him closer, closing a hand in Bucky’s jacket, pulling him close. He could smell the stench of blood this close and below it something sweeter and sickly.

“ _Why?”_ The word forced out, wheezed through shredded vocal cords.

“Why?” Bucky asked leaning in. “What is it?”

“ _Why did you do this to me?”_ the dead man rasped out and Bucky jerked backwards but suddenly the hands tightened in his jacket and even as Bucky pushed himself away the thing was scrabbling over him, impossibly fast and strong.

Bucky fumbled for his gun but the _thing_ pushed him down, wrapping soft hands round his neck, it’s dead and rotting face pushed into Bucky’s.

“ _Why did you kill me?”_ it screeched, deformed face thrust inches from Bucky’s. “ _WHY DID YOU HURT ME?”_

The hands tightened, cutting off Bucky’s breath until all he could smell was the putrid stench of decay. His vision was blackening at the edges and he couldn’t reach his gun, couldn’t reach it and his fingers were slackening-

Steve’s voice suddenly rang out, clear and exasperated.

_The lantern you idiot! Use the lantern!_

_-_ and Bucky swung it round into the thing’s head, knocking him off and to the ground, the metal and glass cracking as it slammed into flesh. Then Bucky was rasping for breath, sucking in lungfuls of air, and then he was on the thing, slamming his fist into his head, again and again until it stooped fighting. There one brief moment where Bucky paused on the upswing and looked down and it was Steve, it was Steve’s face looking up at him broken and bloody, but then the thing gave one last snarl and Bucky drove his fist down again and again until it wasn’t even twitching.

He didn’t know exactly when it died or if it had even been alive in the first place, but it was a while till Bucky pulled himself away from the corpse. He collapsed a few steps away, falling hard on his knees onto the tarmac. Without the lantern it was pitch black and he fumbled in his bag until his fingers closed over the torch and switched it on.

There was blood on his arm and blood on his clothes and something white stuck on the front of his jacket. He looked closer and it was a human tooth, a molar, and at that point Bucky shut down and let the Winter Soldier take over.

The Winter Soldier got up and walked back to the body to check that the target was eliminated. There was nothing on the ground but a large smear of blood as if it had been dragged away, the trail going off into the mist back the way the monster had come. For a moment the Soldier considered following the trail, dispatching of the enemy while it was weakened. But the Winter Soldier had another objective; to find the Memorial St. Theater, and so the Soldier turned in the opposite direction.

Things shifted and moved in the fog around him but he kept going, walking steadily through the haze until in the distance a soft yellow light shone like a beacon. Two more things crawled out of the fog; a thin man with the back of his head missing and a woman whose throat had been cut, the gash in her neck like a wide smile.

The Winter Soldier didn’t stop to listen to them, dispatching both with quick bullets to the head, the sounds dull and swallowed by the mist. He moved quickly with purpose, and as he did, the cinema emerged out of the mist. 

The building looked like an exact replica of the sketch, small and old-fashioned. Closer up there was a tattered cinema billboard advertising something with guns and beautiful woman in not very much clothing. _From Russia With-_ the font read before getting cut off by the large rip in the paper, as if someone had tried to tear it down.

On the other side is a poster for _Captain America vs the Red Skull._

There was no smiling man at the ticket booth, only a handwritten sign stuck up on the grill reading _Closed Due To Unforeseen Tragedy._ Someone had scrawled graffiti under the booth, the words _RIP H.S +M.S_ in red paint. There was a bathroom door to the left and the Soldier broke it down with a kick to the lock.

Inside the light went on and somehow the row of sinks still worked. The Winter Soldier washed away what he could of the blood on his face and arm. He checked over his supplies systematically. Somewhere along the way he must have lost the bag with his uniform and weapons, probably still lying out in the bloodstained road.

All he had now was the gun in his jacket and a single box of ammo tucked into a pocket. The phone was untouched along with the map and torch. The sketchbook was still intact, though a little blood had soaked through the fabric of his clothes onto the cover.

For some reason it was the stain that broke through to Bucky, and all at once the ruthless efficiency that had carried him for the last hour was gone and it’s just him again, leaning against a filthy sink in an abandoned bathroom.

It’s only a small stain, a smudge of brown on the blue but Bucky can’t stop rubbing his thumb over it, as if that will make it go away.

“Steve you’re gonna kill me for this. I know you always hated me messing with your stuff,” he mumbled.

It’s almost funny because Bucky knew that Steve wouldn’t give a shit about the book, would forgive him anything. Forgive him far too much. If he can forgive the fact that Bucky is a monster, a fucked up murderer who killed children and women and men for years without so much as a thought then he’s not going to care about a tiny bit of blood on a book. The thought made him laugh and maybe it wasn’t really laughing, maybe it was something else that was bubbling up through his throat. His fingers clenched tight on the porcelain and there were cracks from the metal hand but the sound keeps working its way out of his throat, because isn’t it all just fucking _hysterical?_

But the funniest part, the punch line, was that Bucky had _known those people on the street._

He had looked at every one of them through his sights, lined up the little black hairs on the lawyer’s head, held the knife to the investigative reporters neck. He had fucked up with the policeman though, one of the few times the Winter Soldier had gotten messy. The man had turned at just the wrong moment, moved just a fraction and the bullet had blown off his jaw. He had been alive when The Winter Soldier had taken the next shot and ended it, trying to crawl across the room, eyes bulged in pain and terror.

Bucky still had nightmares about watching him crawl, the blood running off the pavement into the gutter. The thing was, Bucky remembered a lot more than he wanted to. A lot more than Steve knew. Which was fine. Bucky prefers it that way.

There was a lot he didn’t want Steve to know. But with every moment he remembered of Steve, running down the street or grinning at some dumb joke there was another face, another time the Winter Soldier had pulled the trigger without hesitation. Buck’s memory was Pandora’s Box and for every good memory that fell out, there were a thousand more that made him wonder if it was worth it at all.

“Pull yourself together Barnes.” he whispered to himself and put away the sketchbook. As he did his fingers brushed the soft leather of Steve’s glove. For a second, he had the urge to take it out, put it on, or do something equally sappy like just inhale its smell, feel the leather against his face.

He resisted and let the feeling pass. This was no time to lose control.

It was silent in the entrance hall when he walked out, and dark. Too dark. The door to theatres 1 and 2 lay on different sides of a small snack bar. Bucky wasn’t sure exactly what he expected to find here but if this was the sort of pyscho treasure hunt it had seemed to be so far then, for whatever reason, this was the next step

He headed for the theatre with the Captain America Poster. As he walked past the snack bar he heard faint rustling and he paused. Coming closer he saw a chip packet fall of the shelf in front of him, landing on the ground softly. Bucky tensed and pulled out the gun, wrapping his hands round the handle. Glancing around, the room was still empty but Bucky was still tense as he moved closer. The chip packet lay on the floor seemingly innocuously, but as Bucky moved closer he could see that it was, moving, _squirming_ as if there was something moving around inside it trying to get out.

He nudged it slightly with a foot and the movement inside stilled. Then suddenly it was bursting open and out poured cockroaches, moving in a swarm over Bucky’s foot and dispersing into the shelves. Bucky grimaced in disgust and backed out of the snack bar. He wasn’t a fan of cockroaches but if the town was trying to get at him then this was kind of tame. Steve was the one who was really disgusted by them, left over from his days living in his shithole of a bed sit.

Bucky could hear faint strains of music the closer he came to the door; something crackly and patriotic. He paused before pushing it open, cocking his head to one side. The music was clearer now and the sound was familiar, stirring something at the back of Bucky’s mind. He shook his head and slipped inside, fingers tense around the cool metal of the gun. Inside was a short corridor, at the end of which was a curtain.

The cinema looked as if it had been left in a rush, ancient popcorn still spilled out on the floor, coats and bags still spread out on the seats. There was a thick layer of dust that covered the room like snow. Bucky ran his hand over a chair cushion and his hand came away grey. The velvet beneath was a rusty red.

The music stopped suddenly, the voice cutting off mid word. There was a sudden eerie silence and Bucky tensed, moving into a defensive crouch. Then there was a clicking noise and an automated and smooth female voice suddenly rang out;

_“We apologize for the delay folks. The show will now begin!”_

And then, against all logic, the projector reel began to run with a click, a thin beam of light from the back of the theatre illuminating the empty seats below. The screen came to life with the black and white image of a counter, timing down, three, two, one and-

And there was Steve. Standing tall and squinting slightly in the sun, smiling wide enough to make something in Bucky’s chest ache. The uniform still looked awkward enough on him that he kept pulling at the collar, ducking his head uncomfortably when he remembered the camera.

Even in black and white Bucky could tell that the trees behind him had been going red, that soon the bright sun would sink behind the clouds and in the drizzle that had followed the publicity shoot would be called off.

Steve had acted apologetic for the reporters but had turned to Bucky afterward and grinned at him in a way he never did for the cameras. Bucky remembered this day; even though he had never seen the finished footage before now.

There was a voice talking over the film and Bucky tuned in in time to hear:

“- _a true American hero, fighting with our brave boys across the water-_

Bucky was only half listening, attention caught by a figure standing half out of sight in the corner of the screen. Bucky could only barely make him out; a dark tall shape standing in the tree line behind Steve. There was something in the way he stood that held Bucky’s attention and he frowned and took a step forward, trying to get a better look.

“It always starts out like this. He’ll come closer in a minute,” a voice said from behind him.

Bucky spun, gun out and heart leaping in chest. There was someone sitting in the back of the theater, below the projector and Bucky squinted, unable to make out anything with the bright light shining in his eyes.

“Who’s there?” he barked out.

“Here he comes, look. You’ll want to see this bit,” was all the figure said, gesturing at the screen.

Against his better instincts Bucky turned.

The dark shape in the tree line was walking slowly and unstoppably towards Steve and as he moved the footage seemed to flicker and jump. As he came closer Bucky could make out the dark leather, the blank mask over where the face should be and then all at once Bucky knew how this would end.

“Stop…. stop it,” Bucky heard himself whisper but then he saw the glint of something sharp and metallic in the figures hand and Steve was still smiling, still looking at Bucky out through the screen-

“Stop now,” Bucky said again but the words choked in his throat and hardly came out at all.

The footage jumped again as the figure was still five paces behind Steve. When it flickered again Bucky saw himself, saw the Winter Soldier drawing his arm and knew what would come next. Knew how the blade would come down almost surgically in the soft space between Steve’s jaw and neck and slice neatly through the tendons and arteries.

There was the sound of three gunshots after the other, and then nothing but silence.

When Bucky opened his eyes the screen was blank, smoke rising out from where Bucky had shot out the bright light of the projector. His arm was still stretched out, a faint wisp of smoke coming from the barrel of the gun. He was shaking, Bucky realized, breathe coming in gasps but his hand was perfectly steady. He let it fall and tried to breath normally. It wasn’t real, he reminded himself. It was just a trick.

“You didn’t have to do that you know. It usually stops there anyway. “

The boy (because Bucky could see now it was a boy, pale and scrawny) stood up, gingerly brushing broken glass from his shoulders. He stepped out into the aisle and inched a little closer, looking warily at Bucky’s gun. Bucky could barely see him in the dark of the cinema but he looked to be about sixteen with messy hair and big anxious eyes.

“Shouldn’t you be saving that for the things outside? “ the boy asked, nodding at the gun.

Bucky blinked at him and then at the gun. He felt only half aware of what was happening, still seeing the mask, the knife raised behind Steve’s head.

“You’ve seen them too?” he asked at last, his voice sounding raw and abused in his own ears.

The kid nodded warily.

“They’re out there now I think,” the kid said and to his credit he hid the tremor in his voice quite well. “I don’t know…I don’t know how long I’ve been here.”

Bucky read the look in his eyes and nodded his head briefly, putting away the gun. He could feel the phantom twitch of a knife in his hands and he clenched his fist against it.

“Why are you here? I mean… how did you get here?” the kid asked, edging forward now that the gun was out of sight.

Bucky’s not entirely sure about that himself.

“Looking for a friend, “ Bucky said shortly then paused. “Have you seen anyone else here? Tall, blonde….patriotic?” 

“Oh my god, you’re him aren’t you?” the kid’s eyes widened and he leaned in, grabbing Bucky’s jacket sleeve.

Bucky tensed but stopped himself from lashing out.

“I’m who?” Bucky asked, trying not to growl.

“You’re the scruffy guy he was looking for. Your friend. You know he’s looking for you too right?” the kid said, words spilling out a little too quickly. “You’re Bucky!”

“You’ve seen him?” Bucky asked, feeling the first glimmer of hope he’s had since walking into this godforsaken town. “Where?”

“The hospital. I think he’s trapped down there. I just saw him for a moment on the other side of a gate. He tried but he couldn’t get it open. He gave me his torch, told me to leave but when I got out, those things they…” the kid’s voice trailed off.

“They caught up with you?” Bucky asked. Something’s not right. He’s seen Steve bend steel bars like putty. He shouldn’t be stopped by a door. Unless…. Unless he was weakened somehow. Unless he was hurt. Bucky took a breath and tried to stay in control.

“The town doesn’t make sense anymore,” the kid said quietly. “They nearly found me out there in the mist but then… I found this place.”

“Can you point me in the direction of the hospital?” Bucky asked.

“I can take you there,” the kid said, jutting out his jaw.

“I thought you wanted to get out of here?”

“Honestly at this point it looks like the best way of doing that is sticking with you.”

Bucky looked at him quietly for a moment, turning it over in his head. The kid stared back stubbornly. For the first time, Bucky noticed the scrap of white paper sticking out of his jacket pocket.

“What is that?” he asked, holding out his hand. “Show me.”

The kid’s eyes widened at the shiny metal.

“Uh, yeah,” he stammered and fished it out. “He gave me this. Said I should call this number when I got out. But I lost my phone. What happened to your arm?”

Bucky ignored him and unfolded the stiff white paper. As he expected, it was a page torn from the sketchbook. On one side was a scrawled telephone number he recognized as Romanova’s. On the other side was a sketch of a hospital bed, an IV drip standing beside it. There’s a hunched figure under the blankets but even though Bucky squinted, he couldn’t make out a visible face. He tucked away the page in the sketchbook with unease.

The kid watched with barely disguise unease.

“Fine,” Bucky said at last and turned for the little door at the side of the theatre with a faded EXIT sign hanging over it. “Just try to keep up.”

He didn’t turn around to see if the kid would follow. Picking up strays already. Steve would be proud.


	3. Lover's Lane

The moldering alleyway outside was lit by only by the flickering green light of the exit sign. Bucky went first, scanning the gloom for any sign of life before moving. The kid scampered to keep up behind him, sticking close to his back as Bucky peered around the corner to look at the street outside. The fog seemed to have lifted slightly, no longer a thick wall of gray. Bucky could see the road ahead and the dark gaps of the windows across the street. For a second, he could almost see a shape moving past a curtain. He blinked and then the window was empty. Bucky swallowed and turned his eyes to the road.

They began walking, sticking to the pools of light left by streetlamps. As they walked they passed the occasional parked car, some with doors hanging open and keys still in the ignition. Not for the first time Bucky wondered what the hell happened in this town.

“Turn left here,” the kid said behind him after a while. “The hospital is about three blocks away. I think. Maybe.”

Bucky turned and gave him a look. The kid shrugged and looked embarrassed.

“I _was_ being chased,“ the kid sniped. “And unlike you I’m not some weirdo survivalist bounty hunter.”

Bucky blinked and turned to look at him again.

“Bounty hunter?” he asked, amused.

“Well I thought with the leather jacket and stubble… You _do_ have a gun,” the kid mumbled. “Or are you police? Is this Steve guy your partner?”

Bucky looked back at the ground in front of him and let his smile drop.

“Something like that,“ he said. “Hey, how did you end up in here anyway? You from New Hope?”

“Yeah,” the kid said. “I was out hiking with my friend. We kind of stumbled onto the town.”

“Where’s your friend now?” Bucky asked and then another thought occurs to him. “Wait, when was this?”

“Yesterday. And I don’t know- we got split up somehow. I don’t- I don’t know how. Everything is kind of fuzzy. I remember…I remember walking in the woods. And then it was the hospital and I was alone. And there were…things in there with me.”

“Things?” Bucky prompted, but the kid is silent, looking away into the mist.

He stays quiet for the next few streets. The silence was almost oppressive, with even their echoing footsteps eaten up by the fog. The streets began to blur into each other, the same rows of empty houses and abandoned cars. Occasionally something would heave its way out of the mist towards them. Sometimes they wore uniforms of countries long since dissolved, militias disbanded decades ago. Sometimes they didn’t and those were far worse. Bucky took them out as efficiently as he could, conserving his bullets. He tried not to look at the faces but when he did, he knew them.

If the kid didn’t murmur the occasional words of direction, then Bucky would have been sure they were already lost. The town had seemed so small from the hiking path. How large was this place really? Big enough to need a hospital? Bucky didn’t think he had seen any building big enough for that when he had been walking into town.

This place didn’t seem to obey any laws of geography. Bucky felt like he could go on walking for hours and still be going down the same streets, turning the same corners. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been lost. Had it been before the fall from the train? He had always had his orders, even back then.

He wondered vaguely where his location would be on the tracker Romanova had given him. If there was a little green dot with his name on going up and down the same two streets in White Oaks.

Maybe, like Steve, he had disappeared completely.

There was a yellow glow ahead, bleeding sickly through the fog and Bucky’s steps turned, mothlike, toward it. It grew brighter as they trudged closer, the kid’s directions long since dried up into silence. 

The hospital seemed to lurch into vision all at once, a squat, square building that sat unceremoniously on the other side of a crossroad. It was also tiny; more of a local clinic than anything else. Bucky gave the kid a doubtful glance.

“You needed a map to get out of this place?”

“That’s not- it’s different on the inside,” the kid said defensively. “It goes down deeper.”

The words were faintly familiar, and Bucky frowned for a moment before he remembered where he had last heard them.

_It goes deeper._ Steve’s last message before going missing.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. But Bucky didn’t have time to think about it.

“Last chance to leave,” he told the kid who just set his jaw.

“No way man,” he said. “I’ve seen what’s out here. I’m sticking with you.” 

Bucky shrugged and together they walked towards the dark windows of empty building. The door was jammed and wouldn’t open until Bucky kicked it; the kid hung back, casting nervous glances over his shoulder.

When it finally opened, it was with a crash. Inside was pitch black. His gun in one hand, Bucky swept his torch over the room.

It looked like a small waiting room. Besides the dark there didn’t look particularly sinister in any way. Or at least, no living corpses sat hunched over on the plastic chairs. Bucky stepped inside, gesturing for the kid to stay behind him.

Aside from the chairs, a desk and a handful of health magazines there wasn’t much to see in here. Across the room was a door marked CONSULTATION. Bucky was just moving towards it when there’s a loud crack! of noise. All at once the light came on, so bright it was almost blinding and from the other room there’s a crackle of static and the sudden blare of a radio.

Bucky spun on his heel, gun up. Then he saw the kid, standing by a fuse box and looking sheepish.

“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if that would work.”

“A little warning next time maybe?” Bucky growled and the kid nodded with such a hangdog expression that Bucky almost felt guilty.

The glaring electric light revealed the thick layer of dust that coated the room. Posters hung on the wall; smiling men and woman boasting carefully sculpted muscles and bright white smiles.

_The Perfect Body IS Possible,_ one claimed in bold script. _Change Your Life Today!_

Bucky gave them a suspicious glare. There was something creepy about the almost manic look of happiness on their unblemished faces. He didn’t like turning his back on them.

He followed the muffled sound of the radio instead to the consultation room. When he pushed open the door it got louder, the same jaunty upbeat tune that had been playing in the garage.

_-_ _remember that I've been true to nobody else but you, so just be true to me-_

Bucky hated that song. He remembered where he had first heard it now. In the summer of 1942, it had been impossible to escape. He had heard it in every dance hall, heard it coming out of every car radio and tenement window. It might have been playing in the recruitment office when he had signed up, Bucky isn’t sure.

He remembered Steve had been a simmering ball of righteous anger for months back then, spending all his time staring out the window and going for long anxious walks around the block. He barely sat still, let alone sketched in the way he used to. But once or twice, the storm would clear and he would quiet down, curl up like he used to on the fire escape with his sketchpad. He used to hum to himself sometimes. Maybe even this song.

“Hey,” a voice said, and Bucky blinked, snapping out of the fog of memory. He was still standing with one hand on the door. The kid was looking at him with clear concern and Bucky wondered how many times he had tried to get Bucky’s attention.

“Are you okay? You looked kind of out of it,” the kid said.

Bucky shook his head to try and clear it and then cleared his throat. The memories were like that sometimes when they came back; so vivid it was almost like he was reliving them.

“I’m fine,” he said brusquely and pushed inside. And stopped abruptly, catching a sharp breath.

“Holy shit,” the kid said faintly behind him and if Bucky could speak, he would have to agree.

He had been expecting a compact little room. Maybe at worst, the bed and IV drip from Steve’s sketch. Not this gaping hole in the floor, dug straight through the hardwood and into the ground below. It looked like a burrow for some giant tunneling creature. Floating up from the depths came the crackly music;

- _don’t go walking down lovers lane with anyone else but me-_

“This new to you?” Bucky asked and the kid made a strangled noise.

“Yeah, I’ve never, I mean I don’t remember-“

He trailed off, sounding a little frantic. Bucky wanted to press him for more information but had a feeling it would be useless. Bucky couldn’t help but sympathize; he knew what it was like to have to have your head fucked with.

“Stay close,” he said and then, because there was no other option, Bucky began his descent into the dark.

The tunnel was large enough to walk through but not wide enough for comfort. Bucky had to crouch to stop his head from scraping along the ceiling. His torch beam glanced off the curve of the tunnel walls; mostly packed dirt but studded with the rubble of broken pipes and brick. It wasn’t long before they reached the first small tunnel that branched off to the right and after that it became a frequent occurrence to see dark clawed out holes, stretching away into the ground. Bucky ignored them all and stuck to the same larger path but occasionally he could hear strange scrabbling scratching noises in the dirt. The radio still played on, always just ahead of them, still that same fucking song on repeat.

The kid had up until then been sticking close to his back but now he piped up.

“How far does this go on for? These must run under the whole town.”

Bucky made a grunt of agreement. He had that impression too. It was like a damn warren. Or a hive.

It made him think again of Steve’s dingy bedsit, the way things had constantly been crawling around on the walls, in the bedsheets, making little dark silhouettes on the lampshade. Steve had really fucking hated those things. It was the noise that got to him, he used to say. The constant itchy feeling. He had used to make excuses to stay over at Bucky’s place, just so he didn’t have to go back to it. Bucky had always been happy to oblige of course. Maybe more than happy, even though he used to make a big show of having to share his tiny little bed with Steve’s skinny body. He used to bitch and moan so much he can’t have been any less annoying than the damn cockroaches.

It had all been an act though. Truthfully, he had wished the bed were smaller.

Bucky’s light fell on something lying in the tunnel in front of them; a crumpled black shape. He stopped and held out his hand in warning but the thing didn’t move.

“What is it?” the kid asked and Bucky moved over to prod it cautiously with his foot.

“I think,” he said slowly after a moment’s hesitation, “it’s mine.”

It was unmistakeably the same bag he had lost out on the main street. He crouched down and used his gun to open the flap, look inside. No weapons, no suit. It was empty. Bucky felt a chill go down his back and he stood up, face set. The music had stopped.

“Yours?” the kid echoed. “How did it get down here?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said shortly and then he snapped, “Let’s get going. The sooner we get out of here the better.”

He picked up the pace, hearing the kid stumble to catch up behind him. The sight of the empty bag had filled him with a strange creeping dread for reasons he didn’t quite understand. He wanted to be done with this place. He wanted to leave. Above all, he wanted to get to Steve.

Bucky half expected to arrive back where he had started, walk in aimless circles for hour or perhaps, forever. But then all at once they turned a corner and the end of the tunnel was in sight, sickly yellow light spilling through it. Bucky heard himself gasp and then he was stumbling, almost running towards it. After so long in the dark with the walls pressing in, the claustrophobia as all at once unbearable.

The tunnel entrance emerged into the end of a long corridor complete with linoleum flooring and fluorescent lighting strips overhead.

“See,” the kid gasped, “I told you it was a hospital.”

He looks out of breath and frightened. For a moment Bucky felt guilty; he’s not used to having to slow down for anyone and he’d been pushing them both pretty hard. The kid was young; too young to be mixed up in all of this.

But Bucky wasn’t sure how to be kind. He’d lost that skill somewhere along the line.

“Do you recognize where we are?” he asked instead, trying not to sound too harsh. “Where did you see him?”

The kid nodded, pointing down the corridor.

“These hallways all look alike but uh, I think it was down there,” he said hesitantly.

Bucky was about to set off again but then he paused, glancing at the kid.

  
“You doing ok?” he asked gruffly.

The kid looked a little surprised to be asked. “Uh, yeah. Aside from all the general fucked-up-ness. I’ll be better when I get out of here.”

“When’s the last time you ate?” Bucky asked. Sometimes he forgot that was what normal people needed. Food. Sleep. Safety.

“Not since yesterday.”

Bucky sighed and then scanned around. Creepy tunnel on their left, sinister hallway to the right. But no immediate threats. They could spare a minute. He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled-up protein bar. He tossed it over to the kid, who caught it gratefully, ripping off the wrapper and stuffing it in his mouth with a muffled noise that could be thanks.

“They taste like cardboard,” Bucky told him. “But they’ll keep you going.”

“Right now this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” the kid said, talking with his mouth full. “Do you have any more?”

Bucky had two left, ostensibly for emergencies. He hesitated for a moment but then tossed them both over. He couldn’t help but think of Steve when he saw the starved look in the kid’s eyes.

It felt odd, to be caring for someone other than himself and, to shake off the weirdness, Bucky nodded his head down the corridor and the two of them set off again. The kid was now trailing crumbs behind him. This time Bucky let him lead.

The kid somehow seemed to know his way through the maze of intersecting hallways which is nothing short of miraculous considering as, to Bucky, they all seemed practically identical. Same harsh lighting and plastic floors. After a while they started to pass the occasional unmarked white door but when Bucky tried the handle of one, it was locked so tightly it could have been an illusion painted onto the brick.

But the kid didn’t seem to hesitate or so much as give them a passing look; he’s had the look of a bloodhound who just picked up on a new scent. He had stopped talking except to give the occasional direction.

“Not much further,” he kept saying. “I think it was down here.”

Bucky followed obediently enough until, as they were about to turn another corner, he looked back over his shoulder and noticed that one of the doors they had passed was now standing ajar.

“Hold up,” Bucky said, and the kid looked back impatiently.

“What is it?”

Bucky gestured at the door behind them. “I want to check it out.”

The kid bit his lip and shifted anxiously from foot to foot. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. We’re nearly there.”  
  


Bucky gave him a flat stare and the kid held his hands up.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

Even so, he kept his distance as Bucky approached the doorway. The darkness on the other side was so thick it was almost liquid. No fluorescent lighting here. Bucky took a breath and switched on the flashlight, shining it into the black. Its beam seemed thinner, more fragile somehow. It skimmed across a small room and came to rest on the foot of a bed. Bucky took a sharp breath and involuntarily stepped forward.

It was the room from the drawing. Even in the dark, he was sure of it. Same hospital bed with metal frame. Same rusty IV stand by it.

And on the bed, the same hunched figure under the blanket.

“Steve?” Bucky called out, stepping closer. His voice sounded almost strangled.

“Steve?” he said again, coming closer and thinking, _please don’t be dead, please please, don’t be dead you asshole, not after I came all this way for you, not when I have so much to make up for._

The shape under the sheet was large enough to be Steve but too still, far too still to alive, be breathing.

_Move_ , Bucky told himself as he stood over it. _Pull back the sheet. Do it._

“Wait-“ said the kid, peering around the doorway with wide, frightened eyes but it was too late. Bucky had already grasped the sheet by it’s corner and in one jerky motion he ripped it away.

It wasn’t Steve. For a moment, standing there and looking down that was all Bucky could register. Then he took in the dark combat vest, the thick belt, the mask. The chocking muzzle that Bucky had hated most of all and had long since lost. Worst of all, like some awful kind of mockery, it wasn’t just his uniform. The arm was there too, reflecting the beam of the flashlight. The red star intact.

“What is it? Is it dead?” the kid asked but Bucky heard him only faintly, as if from far away. He couldn’t stop looking at the mask. His stomach roiled; he thought he might be sick.

“Do you know him?” the kid asked, and Bucky shook his head tightly.

“We need to go,” he said. “This is some kind of sick joke.”

“Is it alive?” the kid pressed, coming closer.

Every part of Bucky wanted to leave but he steadied himself and forced himself to look closer. It could have been a mannequin it was so still but the loose brown strands of hair looked real enough where they were splayed across the hospital pillow. The thing looked so like Bucky, or what he used to be, that it was hard to believe it could be anyone else’s face beneath the mask.

He didn’t want to lift it up to see but for some reason it felt inevitable. He didn’t want to know but he had to; his hand shook as he brought it to the catch he knew was just behind the ear.

Then, as his fingers were just brushing the hard, reinforced plastic of the muzzle, the thing _moved_. The metal arm shot up, inhumanely fast, and Bucky’s flesh and blood hand was caught in a vice-like grip.


	4. It Goes Deeper

For a moment, Bucky froze. The metal was so cold it burned.

Then all at once, he snapped into motion, stumbling backwards and shouting for the kid to run. The Soldier (because that’s who it was, awful and incomprehensible though it was) followed him, still gripping him tightly, moving quickly and completely without sound. For a moment they grappled, and then Bucky wrestled his hand free, falling backwards against the wall. He didn’t have time to reach for his gun; the Soldier was already out of the bed and stalking forward in one smooth motion.

If this were any normal target, Bucky would have been able to move, to fight, to do anything. But as it was, horror rooted him to the spot and all he could so was watch the Soldier approach.

The way it moved was so smooth it was almost choreographed; so fluid it couldn’t possibly be human. Bucky was shining the light directly into its masked eyes but it wasn’t dazzled; it didn’t even flinch. As he watched, the Soldier drew a knife from it’s belt-

“ _Move_ you idiot, what are you _doing_?” someone shouted and for a moment Bucky thought it was Steve.

But it was the kid, just a dark silhouette in the doorway. Bucky couldn’t see his face, the light behind him was too bright and for a moment he was unsure; was it Steve somehow? The voice had been suddenly so familiar. 

The Soldier hesitated, cocking it’s head to the side. Then it seemed to come to some internal decision and it changed direction, heading for the door. The kid stumbled back in horror.

Bucky wanted to shout something, to call the Soldier’s attention back on him. Give the kid a chance to run. But for some reason when he opened his mouth, he didn’t have any air in his lungs and his lips were too numb to form words. He tried to get up and couldn’t; his body was no longer under his control. He watched the kid run and the Soldier follow him, smooth and unhurried and even after he was left alone in the dark, all he could do was sit and shake.

_Get up_ , he told himself. _Get up._

There was a scream from somewhere down the corridor.

_GET UP._

Bucky got to his feet and moved towards the door; it felt like moving through treacle. There was a dull ringing in his ears; his vision was faintly blurred at the edges and he had to put his hand against the doorway to steady himself. He wanted to close his eyes, lean his head against the wall, but he couldn’t. He had to find the Soldier. He had to protect the kid.

The thought broke through the haze and he shook his head to clear it. The hallway outside was empty. Which direction had the scream come from?

He took a wild guess and headed to the left and just around the corner, he knew he had made the right choice. There was a smear of red against the wall; a bloody handprint, and Bucky broke into a sprint. 

The blood marked out a grisly trail on the walls and floors and occasionally he saw a dark shape disappearing out of view as he turns a corner but he’s always just a little too slow and he curses himself, breath coming in ragged gasps. There’s another scream from around the next bend and Bucky put on a burst of speed, willing his legs to go faster despite the screaming ache in his muscles.

He rounded the corner and came to a sudden halt as he saw what was waiting for him on the other side.

He was too late.

The endless hallways ended abruptly at an unmarked concrete wall. At the base of it was a small and crumpled figure.

“Fuck,” Bucky said into the silence. “Fuck.”

He rubbed a shaking hand over his mouth and took a few steps closer to the body.

Bucky wanted to call out his name and then he realized, he had never asked it. He felt a sudden overwhelming wave of exhaustion. He took a few stumbling steps to the wall and then sat down with his back to it.

“I’m sorry,” he told the body. “I’m sorry.”

He should have tried to get the kid out when he found him. That’s what Steve would have down. That’s what Steve would have wanted Bucky to do. But all Bucky had thought about was getting to the hospital. Following the breadcrumb trail.

He wondered vaguely where the Soldier was. If he would come back to the scene of the kill. It occurred to Bucky that he should be on his guard right now, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The possibility of coming face to face with his shadow self is somehow unimportant.

The kid had the chance to run. He could have gotten away while the Soldier was distracted. But instead he had stuck around. Stubborn. Stupidly brave. Bucky thought again of the kid shouting at him to get up, his voice sounding so familiar, and a horribly possibility bubbled to the surface of his mind.

This place didn’t make sense. Nothing was what it looked like. And in that moment, the kid had sounded _so much_ like Steve…

He looked over at the body, sprawled next to him on the floor. The head was tilted at an angle, just out of view and Bucky reached out a shaking hand, trying desperately to remember if he had ever had a good look at the kid’s face. When he tried to picture it clearly, the memory slipped out of his grasp.

“I’m sorry,” he said again and then rolled the kid onto his back.

The throat had been neatly cut, the kind of wound that came from brutal efficiency rather than any kind of emotion. It wasn’t Steve.

Bucky recognized it anyway; the dark sightless eyes, the curve of the jaw. He had grown up with it looking back at him in the bathroom mirror. He recognized the patchy attempt at shaving around the upper lip and jaw. Bucky had been given a razor when he was fifteen by his father. He had thought the kid looked young.

“No,” Bucky whispered, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see his own lifeless teenage corpse look back at him. This was insane. This wasn’t happening. 

Maybe it had finally happened; maybe his mind had finally stopped trying to reconcile all the broken scraps of memory. Maybe it had just given up on reality altogether.

“It’s not real,” Bucky told himself, putting his head in his hands and trying to breathe. “This isn’t real. _Your name is Bucky Barnes_. _You are in North Carolina. You are in control. You’re in control_.”

He repeated the mantra to himself under his breath, and after a few times the words began to sound like nonsense. The wall was very cold against his back and his forehead is pressed hard against his knees. The corner of the sketchbook in his pocket was jutting into his cheek. When Bucky reached in his pocket to move it, his fingers brushed against rough fabric. Steve’s glove.

Bucky took it out and looked at it; blue and real in his metal palm.

“You have a mission,” he reminded himself. “You’re looking for someone.”

Giving into a sudden urge, he slipped his non-metal hand into the glove and when he did so, he felt the edges of something inside. He pulled out a small square of paper; a single sheet folded many times over.

Bracing himself for whatever fucked up horror show was gonna be sketched this time, Bucky unfolded it.

It was of a rooftop looking out over the city, maybe in the early morning or late evening judging from the carefully etched lines of shadow. Sitting on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over the edge was a figure with the hat pulled low, holding a sandwich and looking out over the skyline. This sketch was softer than the others and more detailed.

Bucky knew Steve hadn’t sketched it from life. He must have waited till he got home with the memory still fresh in his head. Or waited till Bucky had left. There was a lot of care put into the expression of the face; the expression was strange. Like a rare moment of peace.

Bucky put this drawing very carefully with the others, smoothing down the creases. He stood up and didn’t look at the body. He needed to find Steve. Until he found him, none of the rest of this mattered.

He wasn’t surprised to see a door had appeared in the formerly blank wall. On it, was a single arrow, pointing down.

_It goes deeper._

On the other side was a metal stairway. When Bucky peered down the stairwell, there was only darkness.

“When this is all over, you’re buying me a drink Rogers,” he said into the void and then he began his descent.

At first the endless steps were unnerving but after a period that Bucky judged to be about an hour, they quickly became boring. It was hard to judge just how long he had been walking. The signal on the phone was long gone now, for all that Stark had apparently applied his genius to it. The display kept flickering and the time kept changing; at first skipping forward and then stopping altogether. Bucky tried to count steps and then flights and finally he gave up altogether.

It was hard to ignore the feeling that something was following him down here. When he glanced up, he sometimes thought he saw shadows through the metal grating, but it could have been the flashlight reflecting back on itself.

He went down and down and tried not to see the dead kid’s face when he closed his eyes or feel the ghostly grip of the Soldier’s hand around his wrist.

Instead, he thought about the sketch. When this was all over Bucky decided, they would go back to the rooftop. This time Bucky wouldn’t be the first to leave. Hell, he might even let Steve sit next to him. Bucky would bring the food next time; maybe sandwiches from the deli he had found on the corner. He would ask Steve questions.

He had so much to ask him. There was so much Bucky had missed out on.

It was becoming colder the further down he went, the metal railing damp and chill to the touch. After a while Bucky began to see his breath rising in white clouds. After that he had to tread carefully; the steps growing treacherous and icy beneath his boots.

And then, all at once and seemingly at random, the staircase ended. It happened so quickly Bucky wasn’t sure when the change occurred; all he knew was that he took one step off the metal and his foot crunched onto fresh snow.

He blinked and the stairwell was gone; he was standing alone in the middle of a vast snowy plain. Bucky inhaled sharply and got a mouthful of snowflakes for his trouble. They melted on his tongue and the sensation was disconcertingly real.

Where was he now? When did he leave the real world? When he followed the tunnel in the doctor’s office? When the fog had first settled in? Or maybe even when he had first set foot in the town. Maybe he had fallen into a coma when the car had first crashed and was sitting there now in a wreck at the side of the road.

There was no denying that the snow felt real though when it caught in his hair. It was cold too, so cold that Bucky wasn’t sure if a normal human could survive it. The emptiness stretched around him but far ahead, through the snow he could see a flash of color, a dim vast outline of something towering in the distance.

He walked towards it, struggling through the snowdrifts and after a while the towering shape resolved into view.

At first it was so incomprehensible, so out of place, that Bucky wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was so vast it was hard to see it except in fragments. The vast trunk, as tall and wide as a Manhattan skyrise. The twisted, knotted roots, rising out of the snowdrift like the frozen tentacles of some deep-sea horror. The distant bloom of blood red leaves, so high above that Bucky had to twist his neck back to see them.

It was a tree, bone white and monolithic and all at once, Bucky knew that this wasn’t just the tree the town was named for, that somehow this was the town itself, twisted and ancient and not of this world. He staggered closer, unable to tear his eyes away from the distant bloody canopy above him. Closer to the base of the tree, dark roots rose around him, towering over his head as he picked his way carefully over the treacherous ground.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for until he saw a smudge of blue in between the writhing dark shapes.

Bucky was running before it even registered that he was seeing Steve’s other glove. He nearly fell three times before he reached the spot where it was nestled on top of a snowdrift. He fell to his knees by it and then all at once, even though there was no note folded inside this time, he knew what he had to do.

_It goes deeper._

Bucky began to dig. At first he moved slowly and methodically, handful after handful of freezing snow. Then as he saw the first hint of blue came into view, Bucky felt a sudden desperate surge of urgency, breath coming in short sharp gasps of exertion. Sweeping away the final soft layer of snow his fingers skidded against a hard layer of ice and for the first time, Bucky saw clearly what lay beneath.

Under three feet of solid ice and nestled tightly in dark roots, it was impossible to tell whether Steve was dead or sleeping. The ice could have been glass it was so transparent, and Bucky could see faint traces of pink on Steve’s nose and cheeks. His eyes were shut, and he was completely and utterly still. 

“Steve,” Bucky said, and it came out hushed, almost like a prayer.

There was no possible way that a human could still be alive. But Steve was more than human. And besides, he had survived it before.

Very carefully, Bucky raised his metal fist and slammed it down onto the ice. The shock reverberated up his arm and there was a crackle of splintering ice but when he raised it, the smooth surface was barely impacted. Bucky grit his teeth and did it again, and then again, letting out all the rage and frustration of being so close and having come so far. He clawed and hit at the ice until his shoulder was aching, with an arm that had stopped tanks in their tracks before, and he was making no headway. Bucky snarled in frustration and kept going, thinking, _come on,_ thinking, _please._

He was so sick of this constant careful distance between them, so sick of Steve being just out of arms reach and then somehow, he wasn’t just thinking those things anymore, he was whispering them loud.

He talked until his throat was raw, more than he had spoken in years and as he did the ice began, with excruciating slowness, to chip away. After a while Bucky was so close, he began to use both hands to claw and scratch away, until finally Steve’s face was exposed, the snowflakes settling on his hair.

“Steve?” Bucky said and with a hand shaky and bloody from the ice, he touched his cheek.

It was warm but when Bucky touched his hand to Steve’s neck, the pulse was sluggish and faint. His eyes were still shut tight and out of the ice, Bucky could see the dark purple shadows beneath them, the blue tint of Steve’s lips.

“Steve,” he said again, brokenly. “You have to wake up Steve. We have to go.”

Steve didn’t stir. The snow was falling more thickly now, covering the shattered scratches in the ice that Bucky had made. In a moment they would both be buried again.

“I found you,” Bucky said stubbornly, his hand still on Steve’s face. “I came all the way into this hellhole for you. So get up okay? Wake up now.”

Bucky took a ragged breath and began to feel the bone deep exhaustion creeping in. He didn’t know what to do. He had come this far. He could try and dig Steve out and haul him on his back but what then? He didn’t even know where they were. The way out had closed behind him. A sudden thought made him scramble for the phone in his pocket, but whether from the cold or some strange effect of this place, it was long dead.

  
“Fuck,” Bucky said. “Fuck.” 

In a sudden burst of hopeless anger, he threw the phone into a snowdrift. When he looked back at Steve’s still face, the snow had almost covered it, like a white shroud. The effect was horribly unnerving, and Bucky leaned over, trying to brush the worst of it out of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he told Steve softly. “I’m really sorry it took all this for me to come after you. I’m not gonna leave now though, do you hear? I’m not going anywhere.”

And then, without really thinking about it all, Bucky leaned in closer and kissed him.

It was nothing really; just a quick, chaste brush of lips and there’s more hair and snow and tears involved than Bucky had ever imagined. He pulled away, almost shocked at himself and then, before his eyes, the ice began to melt.

At first slow and almost imperceptibly and then all at once, the cold water rising around them in a rush of noise. Bucky panicked and grabbed for Steve’s body as it came free, still unconscious and limp as a ragdoll. He barely had time to pull him close and fill his lungs with air and then the water was closing over their heads.

For a moment, head buried in Steve’s shoulder and eyes shut tight, Bucky panicked. He had managed to save them both from drowning once but pulling off the same feat twice might be asking too much.

But as quickly as the water had closed in around them, it fell away, leaving Bucky drenched through and shivering, still clutching on tight to Steve. When he opened his eyes, he was lying half on top of Steve on a hard-concrete floor. Some unknown source gave just enough light to see by in the dark.

Beyond that, Bucky had no idea where they could be; if the tree was still there or if the were still in that strange nightmare plane. In that moment he couldn’t have cared less.


	5. What Are We Celebrating?

“Steve?” Bucky asked, voice coming out a rough whisper. He was afraid to move, in case this turned out to be just another cruel trick.

Then Steve blinked and asked softly, “Is this real?”

Bucky considered this carefully. 

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I hope so.”

“Are _you_ real?” Steve asked and then, eyes flicking down, “And you’re here?”

At first Bucky thought that Steve was asking where _here_ was, which was a difficult question that Bucky would be forced to admit he didn’t know the answer to. Then it suddenly occurred to him that Steve might be wondering why Bucky was lying on top of him, at which point Bucky felt himself flush red. He sat up and rolled himself off so quickly, heart pounding. 

“I’m real,” he said brusquely and then almost immediately betrayed himself by reaching out to touch Steve’s pulse. “How are you feeling?”

“Undead,” Steve whispered, pulse jumping under Bucky’s fingertips.

“Really?” Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow. He really hoped not. That would the last fucking thing they needed.

“No,” Steve said in that same rough voice. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

He couldn’t seem to stop staring at Bucky’s face and Bucky swallowed hard, pulling his hand away. He couldn’t bring himself to move any further than that though; part of him felt that if he stopped touching Steve altogether, he might evaporate or disappear again. It was all Bucky could do not to grab onto the front of his uniform with both hands. 

“Can you get up?” Bucky asked. “We need to get out of here.”

“Wait,” Steve said and when he tried to sit up, he gave a groan of pain. “What- where the hell are we Buck, what’s going on?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Bucky asked, helping him up. Steve felt like a solid mass next to him, but he was shaking, weak as a kitten despite all the muscle.

“I uh,” Steve started, sounding confused and dizzy. “I was in North Carolina. I was looking for you…I got on a train, I think? And then I was dreaming. I was dreaming for a long time.”

“A train?” Bucky echoed, but Steve didn’t seem to hear him.

“What are you _doing_ here Bucky?” he asked softly, like he didn’t quite believe it. “I thought you were in New York. Why did you come here?”

“I came her looking for you idiot,” Bucky snapped. “Why the hell did you think I’d be in _North Carolina_? Romanova called me in to come get you- you’ve been missing for a week.”

  
“A week?” Steve asked and then, after a moment of reflection, “You came after me?”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Bucky told him, and he meant it to be a brush off, but it came out softer than he had intended.

Steve ducked his head and Bucky could make out his grin, even in the dark. Before he could help it, he was laughing too, the sound in a strange huff. Bucky isn’t used to laughing, or smiling for that matter, he’s out of practice. They must make a strange sight sitting there on a cold floor in the dark, laughing in their soaking wet clothes. Bucky couldn’t bring himself to care though. The feeling of Steve so close and safe and _alive_ made him feel giddy, lightheaded.

“So, where the hell are we?” Steve asked finally, looking around. “Is this a basement? Are we still near New Hope?”

“Maybe,” Bucky said heavily. “You heard of a place named White Oaks?”

“I think I dreamt of it,” Steve said cryptically. Bucky hesitated and decided to unpack that later. 

“Well this is it. Tiny little ghost town. Should be just outside of New Hope.”

“Should be?”

Bucky sighed, and wondered how the hell he could explain something that he didn’t understand at all.

“The town it… It doesn’t make sense,” he said and then, as much as he could, he tried to tell Steve everything that had happened since Romanova had made that first call to his New York apartment. Bucky tried to tell it as simply and dispassionately as possible but even so, he had to look away when he got to the figure lying in the hospital bed.

To his credit, Steve listened quietly for the most part, only interrupting to ask the occasional question. When Bucky finished, he looked over and Steve looked deep in thought.

“So in conclusion…” Steve said slowly.

“This place is fucked up,” Bucky finished for him and Steve nodded in agreement with a rueful sort of smile.

“Could be a pocket dimension,” he suggested. “Or some kind of psychic attack.”

Bucky gave him an incredulous look and Steve shrugged.

“You see a lot of weird stuff with the Avengers,” he explained. “But either way, this place seems to be directly reacting to you right? Your memories? Your fears?”

Bucky nodded slowly, thinking of the blank mask of the Soldier.

“Does it matter,” he asked bluntly. “All I know is I want to get out of here.”

Bucky stood up and, acting on instinct, held out his hand to Steve. Steve blinked at it for a moment before taking it and hauling himself up, swaying a little when he got to his feet.

“Yeah,” Steve said a little breathlessly. “Yeah that sounds good.”

Bucky suddenly realized how close they were standing, and he quickly dropped Steve’s hand, edging away just a little. He had missed out the part in his story where he had kissed Steve in the ice. It hadn’t seemed important to mention.

“So, is this basement a memory of yours?” Steve asked, peering around the small damp space. Looking around, Bucky could see a boiler in one corner and some cobwebs and not much else. The only light spilled from under a doorway to their left, set up a flight of narrow concrete stairs.

  
“I think it’s just a basement,” Bucky aid hesitantly.

It seemed normal enough but there was no indication of how they had entered; part of him still felt that maybe they were still somehow standing in the twisted roots of the oak tree.

Steve started for the stairs but Bucky stopped him with a hand to his shoulder.

“I should go first,” he said. “You’re unarmed.”

Steve was wearing his ridiculous blue uniform but there was no sign of his shield or any other kind of weapon. It looked strange without the helmet; the sight of Steve’s familiar face seemed strange in combination to the carefully marketed all-American costume.

“So are you.”

Bucky shook his head and twitched open his jacket to show the gun in his waistband. Steve’s eyes flicked down.

“Is that…my sketchbook?” he asked.

“Yes,” Bucky said simply and turned to head up the stairs.

“Wait,” he heard Steve call behind him. “Why-did Natasha give it to you?”

“She did,” Bucky said and paused with his hand on the door at the top of the stairway. “I’ve been following your sketches.”

“Can I see?” Steve asked and Bucky hesitated before passing it over. He felt a certain reluctance to let it go, for reasons he didn’t quite understand.

Steve leafed through it with his brow furrowed until he reached the sketch of Bucky on the roof, where he closed it hurriedly. Even through the gloom, Bucky noticed the tips of his ears had gone faintly pink.

“I don’t understand, these are from months and months ago…I was just sketching what I saw in my dreams.” Steve said softly. “You say these things actually exist? Was I having visions? Of what was going to happen?”

Bucky shrugged. “Maybe it was trying to lure you in. Just like it lured me in with you. It needs bait. Are you ready?”

He nodded at the door meaningfully. It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t care about unwrapping the mystery of this place. It was just that right now, the puzzle didn’t seem that important compared to the more pressing issue of getting the hell away from it.

So, when Steve opened his mouth to argue, Bucky ignored him and opened the door, gun at the ready.

After the darkness of the basement, the sudden flood of bright light was dazzling. Bucky had been braced for it but even so it blinded him momentarily and before his vision cleared he heard the rush of sound. Music was blaring out; the deafening sound of a brass band in full swing. There were raised voices, the clink of glasses, the hot smell of too many sweaty bodies and stale perfume. There was a scream of laughter nearby, the sound of a champagne cork popping.

The sudden rush of sensory overload was so disorientating that Bucky stumbled and would have fallen back down the stairs if Steve hadn’t caught him.

“What the fuck,” he growled, “is this?”

Steve made a strangled sort of noise that could be a laugh. “I guess it looks like a party.”

He was right. They had walked out into the middle of what seemed to be a celebration. The room was a dancehall; strung with streamers that flashed and caught the electric light in shades of blue and red. A live band played on in the corner with a frantic kind of joyful energy. The room was crowded with people; dancing and drinking and smiling widely at one another in pearls and high heels and starched dress uniforms. None of them as far as Bucky could see, had any eyes.

One woman swayed out of the crowd towards them, holding out a tray of champagne glasses. She didn’t look surprised to see two large and dripping men emerge from a basement but then again it was hard to tell when there was nothing but smooth skin beneath her elegantly curved eyebrows.

Bucky’s hand closed around his gun but then Steve’s hand was on his arm.

“Wait,” he whispered in Bucky’s ear. “Let’s just see how this plays out ok?”

“Drinks?” the woman offered with a wide and toothy smile. “Go ahead boys- tonight we celebrate in style!”

Bucky didn’t move, eyes scanning the crowd for a way out. There didn’t seem to be any doors in the dance hall; only large dark windows that were closed despite the heat.

“Um, no thanks,” Steve said diplomatically, his hand still on Bucky’s arm. “What are we celebrating?” 

“Why,” she said with breathless exuberance, “That its over of course! It’s all over now!”

“What is?” Steve asked but she had already moved on, disappearing into the seething crowd.

“They seem friendly,” Steve mused, and Bucky grunted.

“For now,” he said. “Don’t trust it. Let’s try the windows.”  
  


“You don’t wanna stick around and see out the set?” Steve said, nodding at the brass band who had just launched into a new song. He seemed far too cheerful for Bucky’s liking and he gave Steve a suspicious glare.

“I guess I’m just not in the mood for dancing,” he said. “At least not with this crowd.”

“Think any of them are real?” Steve asked in a low whisper as he followed Bucky over the dancefloor. Bucky, who was more agitated by the noise and confusion than he wanted to let on, was suddenly very grateful of Steve’s solid presence at his side. He almost preferred the empty misty street with it’s living corpses to this.

“How the hell should I know?” he snapped as they paused to let a dancing couple twirl past.

“It’s your head, right?” Steve said reasonably. “It must be- look at the clothes.”

All the padded shoulders and long hemlines hadn’t escaped Bucky’s notice either; he had spent enough time at dances as a kid to recognize the music too; whatever this party was, it was firmly rooted back in the 40s as far as style went.

“Who says it’s my head?” he asked. “I’m not the only old-timer here.”

Steve laughed again and with annoyance Bucky noted that there were little pieces of confetti stuck in his hair. His fingers twitched to brush it out. They pushed past a group of sightless young men in uniform toasting each other. It was slow going, moving through the crowd like this, mostly because Bucky felt an inherent sort of disgust at the thought of touching any of the guests. Steve touched his shoulder lightly and pointed through the crowd and Bucky saw a series of red-haired ballerinas spinning elegantly through the couples swaying to the strains of ‘The Very Thought of You’.

“Definitely your head,” Steve said pointedly.

He let out a short huff of laughter Bucky’s scowl and that was the last straw; Bucky stopped in his tracks and gave him a long, considered look.

“Why are you so fucking cheerful? You realize this place is dangerous right? We could both be crazy right now. Or trapped.”

Steve stopped smiling but he didn’t look pissed off, just thoughtful.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I know this place is dangerous. I know I should be scared or angry that it had me trapped for so long. But you came after me. You’re here.”

He looked at Bucky then with a kind of open honesty that was more frightening in that moment than any eyeless dancer. Bucky tried to talk bit he found he couldn’t and when Steve reached out and laid his fingers lightly on Bucky’s metal arm, he found he couldn’t bring himself to pull away.

“Besides,” Steve went on, speaking low and intimate. “I might still be dreaming. You never let me get this close when I’m awake.”

Bucky could feel his pulse racing and there was a strange rushing in his ears. The confetti was still in Steve’s hair. This time Bucky couldn’t help it; he reached up to brush it out of the way and he heard Steve’s breath catch.

“You’re not dreaming,” Bucky said roughly.

But Steve was right in some way; this place was outside of time and space. The rules didn’t seem to apply here and maybe, just maybe, that wasn’t completely a bad thing.

Bucky moved a little closer and thought that maybe to an outsider they might look like any one of the swaying couples around them. In some ways, he had always wanted this, to stand this close to Steve in public, to hold his hand on a crowded dancefloor. 

“Listen, Bucky, in case something happ-“Steve started and then he fell silent.

“What?” Bucky asked, suddenly desperate to know. “What is it?”

When he looked up at Steve’s face, Steve wasn’t looking back, staring at some point over Bucky’s shoulder. The color had drained from his face.

A lot of things happened at once, very fast.

Bucky turned his head to look and saw a brief glimpse of a dark figure moving through the crowd towards them, raising a rifle to its shoulder. Bucky didn’t get much more than an impression though because Steve had already grabbed his shoulder and was pulling him down even as the Soldier began to open fire.

“Move!” Steve yelled and Bucky became suddenly aware that he was frozen in place. With a great effort he tore his gaze away from the Soldier and let Steve haul him bodily in the direction of the windows.

The guests didn’t stop dancing or start screaming; they simply crumpled when the bullets hit them and fell soundlessly to the floor. The band played on as the soldier advanced, the music speeding up to a manic pace. Through the mass of moving bodies Bucky saw that the ends of the ballerina’s arms and legs were now flashing, spinning blades. They reached a wall and crouched by it; watching the Soldier cut a bloody path across the room.

“Can we fight him?” Steve asked, having to yell now across the music. “Do you have the gun?”

Bucky didn’t think the Soldier could die but he thrust the gun at Steve anyway.

“Cover me,” he yelled. “I’ll break the glass.”

Up close, the glass was so dark that it could have been black paint on the other side; there was no indication of life and for all Bucky knew there could be bricked over. But he didn’t have any choice, not with the Soldier closer every second, so he pulled back his fist and drove it into the glass.

Like the ice, it didn’t break easily; the glass splintering into cobwebs but not yet shattered. Too slow.

He didn’t dare check to see how close the Soldier was now. Bucky could hear the rifle going off but there was no answering shot from Steve.

“What are you doing,” Bucky snapped over his shoulder in between blows. “Shoot it!”

Steve was standing like a rabbit in headlights, the gun raised but wavering.

“I…” he said. “I…”

But there was no time to argue; at last the glass gave way under Bucky’s fist. A gust of cold fresh air blew through the shattered opening and Bucky could have sobbed in relief.

When he spared a look back, the Soldier was almost on them, kicking aside a fallen party guest. Cursing, Bucky grabbed the gun from Steve’s limp hands and let of a volley of rounds directly into the thing’s chest. The Soldier staggered and before he could recover, Steve had wrapped one arm around Bucky’s waist and hauled them both through the broken window.

As they fell out into the night, Bucky could still hear the band playing on.


	6. So Sentimental

There was a moment of sickening weightlessness and then they hit the ground, hard. Bucky rolled with the impact, but he hadn’t prepared for it and it was enough to knock the air from his lungs. Bucky cursed and then Steve was hauling him up and onto his feet. Looking around, Bucky saw that they were standing on the outside of a large white house; the same one he had seen on the far side of the valley when walking into town. The window they had fallen from was on the second floor but there was no indication that the house had ever been anything but abandoned; every window was dark and lifeless and the only sound was the distant sound of night insects and Steve’s breathing beside him.

“You alright?” Steve asked, looking up and down like he was inspecting Bucky’s body for hidden injuries. Bucky pushed him away and took a step back, feeling shaky with adrenaline and something like anger.

“We need to keep moving,” he said. “We’re nearly out now but it could be following us.”

“Buck?” Steve said, sounding hurt but Bucky had already turning away, scanning the treeline.

He’s sure if they head west for long enough, they’ll reach a road. Already he felt more grounded in reality. The town looked very small from up here, like a children’s toy and it’s hard to believe that any of it, the Soldier, the great white tree, the tunnels and the dead kid with his face, could have been real at all.

Ahead of him, the trees were a black and tangled mass in the dark, but they aren’t frightening at all compared to what Bucky would be leaving behind. They would head west. He had thrown away the phone, but he was sure that Natasha could find Steve without it once they were far away enough from whatever dampener this town had on technology. The Avengers could take it from there; pick Steve up in their jet or hovercraft or whatever the fuck it was they were using now. Bucky could watch from a safe distance, make sure Steve was safe.

And then disappear again. Maybe New York. Maybe somewhere else. It wasn’t safe to try and be around Steve, he knew that now. If this town had taught him anything it was that the past couldn’t be buried forever.

Bucky reached the treeline, Steve still dogging at his heels, and then stopped abruptly. Between the trees was a solid wall of thorns.

“Fuck,” Bucky said and then again, with feeling, “ _Fuck.”_

“I can’t see the other side,” Steve said, peering through the thorns. “I don’t think we’re getting out this way. How did you come in?”

“On the other side of the valley,” Bucky, feeling again that strange hopeless anger. “But knowing this place, there’s probably a fucking avalanche blocking the road by now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not though,” Steve said, looking out over the darkened valley.

It looked very still and silent from up here but Bucky could see the mist that was settled low over the houses. The thought of making their way back through it makes a heavy weight settle in his stomach.

“Hey,” Steve says and reaches out to touch Bucky’s elbow lightly. “We’re gonna get out of here.”

Bucky didn’t look at him, just stepped away and started off down the path.

“I have five bullets left,” he said, without looking back. “So, let’s hope so.”

He felt better when the house on the hill is behind them, but only slightly. The further they descended into the valley, the closer the fog pressed in around them and soon Bucky began to get twitchy about the thought of the things he had seen crawling around in the street before. It wouldn’t be hard to dispatch them, or even outrun them, broken and crawling as they were. But what’s worse is the thought of Steve seeing them. Bucky knows that Steve must have done his research on the Winter Soldier. He would be able to recognize the faces of Bucky’s victims maybe even better than Bucky himself.

It was a strange consolation to no longer have the flashlight.

They made it as far as the cinema without running into anything. It was different from last time; it looked long abandoned, the windows and doors boarded up. Even the posters were gone, leaving peeling grey tatters in their place. 

“Did you ever see this place before today?” Steve asked, frowning. “I swear I know it from somewhere…”

Bucky was about to snap at him to keep moving when he saw something moving in the fog. He saw a grasping broken hand and a flash of dead white eyes and then he was grabbing Steve’s hand and pulling him into a run.

“What is it?” Steve asked but Bucky just shook his head.

“Don’t look,” he said urgently. “Just keep going.”

They passed more things as they ran; a woman grasping at a broken string of pearls around her slit throat, a soldier with a bullet hole for an eye and other things, things that were only vaguely close to human. Heart juddering in his chest, Bucky kept going, praying that Steve didn’t look back.

Finally, after what could have been minutes or hours, they left the street behind and came at last to the foot of the path leading up out of the valley. The welcome sign was still there, the cheerful letters still announcing White Oaks as the nation’s capital of nostalgia. Only now there was an illustration accompanying it, marked out in rough clumsy stroke. A spreading tree with twisted stabbing roots. The spreading leaves are marked out in a rusty red. It doesn’t look like paint.

But Bucky couldn’t care less; not when they were so close to freedom. He could see the path stretching up out of the valley; clear and unblocked.

He took a step forward.

“Wait,” Steve gasped and Bucky turned to tell him it was alright, that they were nearly out now.

Afterwards, when he looked back, he wasn’t sure what had tipped him off. Had there been a flash of moonlight reflecting off metal? Or had there been some kind of sound to warn him, the audible click of the gun echoing across all that empty space?

But no- the Winter Soldier was never that sloppy.

Maybe it came down to intuition or pure dumb luck in the end, that Bucky yanked Steve aside, just as the bullet hit the ground where he had been standing. It cut so close that Bucky could almost feel the phantom trace of it across his cheek.

“What-“Steve started but he was cut off by the whistle of another bullet going past.

His eyes widened and then he was moving for cover, with an inhuman burst of speed. He would have moved faster still if he wasn’t trying to act as a shield, but Bucky didn’t have time to get angry before Steve was kicking in the door of the nearest building and pulling them both inside.

Leaning on either side of the door they heard three more shots, then nothing but silence. Looking around for the first time, Bucky saw they were in the same garage he had wandered into when he had first arrived in White Oaks. This place at least seemed unchanged, almost eerily so, as if it was frozen forever in the moment that Bucky had first seen it. A lamp was still shining on the table, filling the room with a war, glow and that same old song was still playing on the old radio.

_-don’t sit under that apple tree with anyone-_

“Was it him?” Steve asked, pulling Bucky from his thoughts. “The Soldier?”

“I didn’t see,” Bucky said shortly. “But if it was, I don’t know how it missed us.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to hit us,” Steve said, rubbing a hand over his face and looking suddenly exhausted. “Maybe it was just a warning shot. To stop us leaving.”

“The Winter Soldier doesn’t do warning shots,” Bucky said and moved over to the table. He wasn’t surprised to see the same cigarette still smoking in the ashtray.

“Hey,” Steve said softly, coming closer and holding up a hand to Bucky’s face. “You’re bleeding. Did he catch you?”

Bucky blanched away when he felt the brush of Steve’s fingers.

“It’s not a he,” he snarled. “It’s not human.”

“I know-“ Steve said, eyes wide and hurt.

“ _It’s not me, Steve_ ,” Bucky said, cutting him off. “It’s not me.”

“I know that.”

“Then why didn’t you _shoot_ it? Back in the party?”

“It looks like you,” Steve snapped, suddenly angry. “I know it isn’t you, but I can’t just point a gun at it and pull the trigger like it’s _easy_ goddamnit. Don’t you understand that?”

Bucky opened his mouth to snap back but something about Steve’s face made him stop, the fight leaving him all at once.

“You can’t be so sentimental,” Bucky said quietly. “It’ll get you killed.”

Steve gave him a long look and for a moment he looked just like the stubborn kid that Bucky had grown up with.

“Sit down,” Steve said. “You need to get that blood off your face.”

Bucky is too tired to fight Steve on this one, so he sat on the edge of the desk as Steve rummaged around for something close to a first aid kit. When he couldn’t find one, Steve made do with a clean-enough dishtowel and a bottle of whiskey stashed under the desk.

“Stay still,” he warned Bucky before dabbing at the fresh cut on his cheek. “Does it hurt?”

“You don’t need to do this you know,” Bucky pointed out, trying not to sound harsh. “I’ve had a lot worse.”

“I know,” Steve said, looking briefly very sad. “Just let me do this okay. Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not being a baby,” Bucky protested and then winced because that sounded more childish out loud than it had in his head. “I’m just saying it’ll be gone in half an hour on it’s own.”

“I know,” Steve said and didn’t take his hands away.

He was very close like this, his face just inches away. It made Bucky uncomfortable and too warm and so he closed his eyes, feeling the faint sting of the alcohol. He could smell Steve when he was close like this.

“I hate this song,” Steve said, almost absentmindedly.

Bucky hummed in agreement but truthfully, he hadn’t even noticed it was still playing.

“It was on the radio the day you went to the recruitment office,” Steve said, his voice a low, close rumble.

“You remember that?” Bucky asked, without opening his eyes.

“Yeah. I kept trying to sketch but I was too distracted. I kept thinking about you shipping off without me. I ended up ripping out three pages of scribbles.”

“I remember,” Bucky said softly. “I found them in the trash later. I thought you were pissed at me.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember a lot of things,” Bucky confessed. “I remember more every day. Sometimes I wish I didn’t.”

Steve was silent for a moment and his hands stilled on Bucky’s cheek.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to remember me,” Steve joked. “Chasing you around everywhere. Driving off all your dates. I was a real pain in the ass when we were kids.”

“You were,” Bucky said. “But I liked it. I always did.”

Steve is still touching him. There’s only so much longer they can pretend it’s about the cut on Bucky’s cheek. Bucky is dimly aware that the song on the radio has finally ended and been replaced by something slow and soft.

_I am only what you make me,_ the singer was crooning, _so take me_. Bucky wondered if Steve could hear his heartbeat when he was this close.

“I dreamt that I was still under the ice,” Steve said softly. “And I was alone. And then I dreamt of you. I dreamt…I dreamt you kissed me.”

Bucky didn’t dare open his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was sure still breathing.

“It wasn’t a dream,” was all he could bring himself to say and then, before he had time to panic, there were lips on his, soft and warm and real.

Bucky froze and when he opened his eyes, Steve was already pulling away, looking almost frightened.

“Sorry,” he said, “God, I’m sorry I didn’t-“

Bucky didn’t let him finish, grabbing onto Steve’s armor by the ridiculous leather straps and pulling him in. Bucky could barely remember the last time he had touched someone like this, let alone kiss them and he was messy and desperate with it, greedy for the feeling of Steve pressed up against him. Steve made a startled little nose against his mouth and then he was giving back as good as he got, his hands cradling Bucky’s face like he was something precious.

Bucky was aware of Steve gasping his name, but it was getting harder and harder to pull away from the heat of Steve’s mouth. Bucky was admittedly out of practice with kissing, but he had forgotten it could be like this, that the feeling of just someone’s mouth moving against yours could drive you so crazy. Each kiss made him hungrier for more; he wanted everything, all of it. Maybe it had never been like this before, not with the smiling girls in dance halls or the rough men in back alleys, maybe it had never been this good.

  
“Can I, would it be okay-“ Steve was gasping, his hands moving down to skate just under the hem of Bucky’s shirt.

“Yes, fuck, yes,” Bucky said and then Steve’s hands were under the fabric and moving up his bare chest, shockingly warm. The feeling of being touched was making Bucky feel unhinged, insane and he couldn’t stop the noises spilling out.

  
“God, Bucky, I just want to-“ Steve was saying and Bucky growled, trying to pull at the hard Kevlar of Steve’s armored chest.

“How the fuck does this come off,” he snapped in frustration finally and Steve pulled away from where he was biting at the soft skin of Bucky’s neck to laugh.

“It’s not really designed for easy removal,” he said, sounding almost dazed.

“Well that’s stupid,” Bucky said and when Steve laughed again, he looked suddenly so much younger, like all the years were stripped away.

“Maybe this isn’t the best time to be getting rid of armor anyway,” Steve said ruefully. He didn’t step away though or take his hands off Bucky’s chest.

Bucky laughed and tilted his head so it was leaning on Steve’s shoulder.

“What the fuck are we doing?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Steve answered after a pause. “But I’ve wanted to do it for a long time. My whole life maybe.”

Bucky looked up at him and saw that same reckless bravery as always on Steve’s face. There was fear there too though; it was strange to see Steve uncertain.

“Me too,” Bucky admitted and saw something like relief pass across Steve’s face. “But not here. Not in this place. “

“Yeah,” Steve said, letting go and stepping back with obvious reluctance. “I gotta say for all the ways I pictured this happening, it wasn’t in a abandoned gas station in a nightmare town.”

“You thought about it?” Bucky asked before he could stop himself. He can’t stop looking at the way Steve’s lips look red and bitten.

“Sometimes,” Steve said, going a little pink. “Okay, a lot maybe.”

Bucky looked away to hide his smile.

“So what do we do now,” he asked. “Wait till dawn?”

“Do you think dawn will come? How long have you been here for?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know. It feels longer than a night. This could last forever.”

“And we’re pinned down here. “

“We’ll just have to go up the path anyway,” Bucky said firmly. “I think the only way out is the way in.”

“Maybe…” Steve said, sitting down next to him on the desk, his thigh very warm next to Bucky’s. “Listen, I’ve been thinking- what if we got this wrong?”

“How?” Bucky asked, trying not to be distracted by the feeling of Steve so close to his side.

“What if this isn’t your nightmare?” Steve asked. “What if it’s mine? I thought that the cinema seemed familiar when I passed it- I think I went to it once, in New York. It was only two years ago. And the dance hall- that’s how I always pictured it. The end of the war. I dreamed about this place for weeks before I came here- I put them all down in that sketchbook. I was dreaming under that tree too. What if all that time, the town was feeding on me somehow? Taking my dreams and making them reality?”

Bucky felt a cold trickle down his spine, and he shook his head. “No. The bodies in the street. I told you, they were the Winter So- _my_ targets.”

“I know,” Steve said quietly. “I saw all the files. I looked at them for weeks Buck before coming here. What if those faces ended up mixed into my dream somehow?”

“And the Soldier?” Bucky asks quietly. “Are you that scared of him?” 

“Yes,” Steve said after a moment’s hesitation. “But not for the reasons you think. I’m not scared of you. I was frightened of the mask. Frightened of what they did to you. Of what would be left of you when it came off.”

Bucky looked away, feeling hard and brittle. He felt a hand nudging his own where it was braced on the table between them. Bucky let his fingers uncurl and then when Steve took his hand, Bucky exhaled, feeling a sudden weight lift from his shoulders.

In a way it was a relief to know that Steve was just as frightened of the Soldier as Bucky was. It meant they could face it together.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, so maybe it is your nightmare. So what does that change?”

“It means you were right,” Steve told him. “It means we have to go out the same way I came in. We have to take the train.”


	7. End of The Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter this time and warning for a sex scene towards the end. There will be a (short) epilogue which will hopefully wrpa thing sup a bit but this pretty much concludes the end of the action. Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed my brief trip back to my old 2014 obsession haha.

“What train?” Bucky asked.” What are you talking about?”

“The train from New Hope,” Steve said slowly. “It’s how I got here.”

“There is no train from New Hope.”

“There was for me,” Steve says stubbornly. “I thought we already established this place doesn’t make sense.”

“Fine,” Bucky sighed. “So does this train of yours have a station?”

“It’s not my train,” Steve grumbled but nodded. “If I remember right it’s just two streets away. Think we can make it there without getting shot?”

“We’d have more cover in the street than on the valley slope.”

“So yes?”

“So maybe,” Bucky said grudgingly. 

They set out cautiously, sticking to alleyways and avoiding the open. Bucky felt the hair on the back of his neck sticking up, his ears straining for the sound of the sniper rifle. But no bullets come whistling past as they move through the dark and the streets are empty. Bucky should be relieved, but the lack of any clear threat makes him uneasy. He can’t help but feel they’re being herded somehow, as if this town is rewarding them for heading in the direction it wants.

Steve was leading the way but after a while Bucky began to suspect he might have been lost from the way he kept stopping and frowning at the endless identical junctions. Bucky was on the verge of calling him out for it when, as they emerged from an alleyway, Steve held out an arm to block the way.

“See,” he whispered, pointing across the street. “Believe me now?”

Sure enough, there was the station. It wasn’t much; just a single platform and tiny ticket office but there was no denying it’s existence. A old fashioned steam engine was waiting at the platform, letting out soft huffs of steam, the engine rumbling. Light spilled from the windows, soft and golden, but there was no sign of life from inside the carriages.

“Okay fine,” Bucky said, watching carefully for any sign of movement. “ Are you sure about this? Isn’t it all a little too convenient?”

  
Steve’s eyes narrowed. “You think it’s a trap?”

“I think this whole goddamn place is a trap. But I don’t know if we have a choice.”

“I think it’s the way out,” Steve said, sounding suddenly very serious. “I don’t know why. I just feel it. And if this place is made from my mind…”

“Okay,” Bucky said simply. “Let’s go.”

Steve looked caught off guard, as if he had been bracing for a fight.

“Okay?” he asked. “That easy?”

“I trust you,” Bucky said. “If you think it’s the way out, I’ll follow you.”  
  


He nudged Steve’s shoulder and smiled up at him. “Till the end of the line remember?”

Steve looked stricken and then he was leaning in and pressing a swift, fierce kiss to Bucky’s lips. It was a stupid, reckless place to do it but Bucky leaned up into it anyway, feeling a strange kind of happiness bubbling up in his chest. When they pull apart, Steve is slow to let go of him.

He stayed close even as they crossed the road in a jog and reached the platform. It still felt too easy but against his better instincts, Bucky was starting to feel a strange kind of giddy relief at the thought of leaving.

“Think we need a ticket?” Steve asked, nodding at the booth but even as he said it, a whistle sounded, so close it was deafening.

“I think that’s our cue,” Bucky said and, taking a breath, he stepped up onto the train. It felt real enough under his feet, the cabins brightly lit but safely devoid of life, human or otherwise.

He held his metal hand out to Steve, who was looking up at him from the platform. “What are you waiting for?”

“Wait,” Steve said, looking suddenly frightened. “Wait Bucky, no what if-“

But it was too late, the train was already grinding into motion and they didn’t have any time left to discuss it. Steve grabbed Bucky’s hand and jumped onto the train just as it picked up set off, the platform falling away behind them. It jolted as it sped up and Bucky had to grab onto one of the metal poles to steady himself.

“You get cold feet?” he asked Steve, who was looking pale and on edge. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, voice frayed. “I just wonder if we maybe just did something very stupid.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Bucky said, grinning, feeling strangely elated as the White Oaks became a blur outside the window. They were nearly out now and picking up speed all the time, the buildings falling away one by one. There was another great whistle, the engine rumbled and then they were climbing, up out of the valley and into the dark trees.

The pines were so thick and dark it was hard to see anything except their pale reflections which flashed in and out of view as the train juddered.

“It’s working,” Bucky said in relief, hardly able to believe it. He looked over at Steve and felt his lips twitch into a smile. “I didn’t even use up all my bullets.”

Steve didn’t smile back, or even look over. He was still staring, transfixed at the window.

“Bucky,” he said in a rush of breath. “Look.”

“What is it?” Bucky asked, head snapping back. He scanned the dark trees for a moment before realizing suddenly what was so wrong.

There were three figures reflected in the glass. The third figure emerged from behind

Bucky swore and spun around but there was nothing but the empty carriage. When he looked back over his shoulder at the window, it was still there, looming out of the darkness behind them. The figure had stepped closer, so close that Bucky could recognize the dark clothes and blank mask, the raised knife in its hand.

“It’s him,” Bucky heard himself say, as if from far away. “It’s the Soldier, he followed us.”

“Look out,” Steve snapped as the reflection’s arm plunged down and if Bucky hadn’t stepped back, the knife would have slipped neatly between his ribs. As it was, it cut a line of fire across his chest, slicing neatly through his shirt and into the flesh below. Bucky cried out and when he looked up, the Soldier was there in front of him in the flesh, raising his arm again for the killing blow.

Bucky rolled to the left and then Steve was snapping into action, landing a solid kick to the Soldier’s chest that sent him staggering backwards. Without really thinking, the gun was in Bucky’s hand and he fired two shots at the Soldier’s head, the force sending him sprawling to the floor of the carriage.

Before the Soldier had a chance to recover, Steve hauled Bucky to his feet and then the two of them were up and running towards the back of the train. They make it through two more passenger carriages without looking back and as they moved the train seemed to be speeding faster and faster, the windows showing nothing but a dark blur of leaves. The door at the end of the last carriage was locked and as Steve kicked at it, Bucky glanced over his shoulder.

“Is it close?” Steve yelled.

“Just hurry up,” Bucky told him, raising the gun and taking a breath to steady his aim.

The Soldier was at the other end of the carriage. Bucky could see the places where the bullets had found their mark. One had shattered the glass of the Soldier’s left eye; the other was lodged deep in it’s forehead. A perfect shot. As the Soldier stalked closer, Bucky could see the blood that trickled down the forehead was dark and oozing, as thick as treacle. 

_You’re not me,_ Bucky thought, _but if you’re anything close, I know your weak spots._

He fired the gun again, this time at the non-metal hand that held the knife. The Soldier reacted but just a second too slow and the knife clattered to the floor. It took with it two fingers, but the Soldier didn’t wince or pause; just kept advancing.

“Steve?” Bucky called, pulling up the gun to aim again.

“Hold on, just-“ Steve said and then there was a loud splinter of breaking wood.

Bucky turned and saw Steve staring, wide eyed at what lay beyond the broken door.

It was a freight carriage and mostly empty, bit Bucky didn’t have time to wonder where he recognized it from.

“Move,” he grit out , pushing at Steve who was frozen in place. They half fell into the next carriage and as they moved between them, the rush of air was freezing, carrying with it flecks of white snow.

“No,” Steve said woodenly, “No, Bucky I know this place, we should never have got on the train…”

“Now you tell me,” Bucky said and then when he fired again at the Soldier, the gun jammed in his hand. Bucky cursed and the sound of it seemed to snap Steve out of whatever state he had been in. As the Soldier leapt forward, Steve was there to meet it, blow for blow.

The Soldier was vicious, moving with deadly efficiency but Steve wasn’t holding back anymore, and it was hard to tell who had the advantage. From the sidelines, Bucky tried to get a clear line of sight.

Two bullets left; he had to make it count but it was near impossible to get a clear shot at the speed they were moving. There was a loading door behind them and thinking fast, Bucky shot at the hinges, holding it in place.

The door fell away so easily it felt almost inevitable and then, staring out at what lay beyond, Bucky realized just why Steve had been so afraid.

_They had been here before._

The dark trees outside were gone, replaced with a view of endless white mountains and at last the dawn had come, visible even through the gale that was raging outside. Everything was blindingly white and dazzled, Bucky lowered the gun, his thoughts replaced by a sickening sensation of déjà vu. He didn’t need to step any closer to the edge to know that below the rushing train, the cliff dropped sharply away into nothingness.

Steve saw it at the same time that Bucky did, his face going slack with horror. He was only distracted for a moment, but it was enough for the Soldier to take advantage of the opening. It hit out with a flash of gleaming metal and the blow caught Steve hard in the face, snapping his head back with a crack. Dazed, Steve stumbled back, and the Solder pressed its advantage, hitting down again and again. When it drew back its fist, there was blood glinting on the metal.

The sight of it unleashed something cold and angry in Bucky’s chest. With a snarl he leapt forward to engage, ignoring Steve’s cries to stay back. 

The Soldier turned to meet him, mask as blank and expressionless as ever and then they were at last face to face, the train still rattling forward along on the edge of the ravine. Fighting the Soldier was like fighting his own shadow; it seemed to anticipate every move Bucky made and countered each blow with with ruthless precision. For a moment, standing there balanced by open door, Bucky felt as though they were locked in a strange kind of dance. The wind blew snow into his eyes and through it the Soldier looked like a dark shadow, like death and retribution and justice all rolled into one.

The Soldier had his metal arm in a lock, pushing him backwards towards the edge and as they swayed there, Bucky thought about pulling him backwards. Maybe it would be a fitting end for them both, to end it all in the same place where Bucky Barnes had dies for the first time, in the same place where the Winter Soldier had been born. To sacrifice his life for Steve…that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. It wouldn’t make up for everything but at least it would be something.

Then Bucky caught sight of Steve, face bloodied and broken and for a second their eyes caught.

_No,_ Bucky thought, _No. I want to live._

With a final effort, he brought up his other arm and unloaded his final bullet into the side of the Soldier’s face. It wasn’t enough to kill it, the thing wasn’t alive enough to kill, but it was enough to break the mask. Bucky yanked it off and as he did, the Soldier howled.

The sound of it was desperate; unhuman. Bucky grit his teeth and, fighting revulsion, he spun them around and pushed the thing through the open door. It fell backwards, still screeching and as it did so, it hooked a hand in Bucky’s shirt and _yanked-_

For a moment, Bucky tipped forward, and saw below him the drop, endless and achingly familiar.

Then he felt a firm arm wrap around his waist, steadying him in place. The Soldier lost his grip and then he was gone, disappearing into the swirling snow.

Bucky fell back flush against Steve’s chest and the two of them collapsed against the far wall, still wrapped around each other.

“Are you alright, are you hurt?” Steve asked and his hand were shaking as he touched Bucky’s face.

“I’m fine,” Bucky choked out, “I’m fine you caught me. You caught me.”

When Steve kissed him, Bucky could taste blood on his mouth, but he didn’t care. The wind was still in his hair, the snow catching in their hair and clothes, but Bucky barely felt it. He just closed his eyes and kissed Steve back and when they drew back to breathe, he said, “I think it’s over now. I think it’s going to be okay.”

* * *

Bucky couldn’t say how long they stayed like the floor but they both felt the shift when the train began to slow. Somehow, as they had been watching each other, the train around them had undergone another shift. Rather than a freezing freight car they were now on the floor of what looked like a modern subway carriage.

“Where the fuck are we now?” Bucky asked. The faded adverts on the inside of the carriage were for financial advice, the latest in vape technology and dubious pharmaceutical drugs. They looked reassuringly familiar but he wasn’t ready yet to trust so easily.

“I don’t know- it can’t be worse than where we’ve come from,” Steve said and even after he helped Bucky up, his arm lingered protectively on Bucky’s back.

When the train pulled to a halt, the doors slid open easily. The platform on the other side was crowded with communters and tourists but no one else got on.

“I think,” Steve said slowly, peering out. “That this is Utica Avenue.”

“We’re in New York?” Bucky asked, eyes widening. “Is it another trick?”

“No way to tell,” Steve said and then, taking a deep breath, he stepped out onto the platform. For a moment, he just stood there and then he held out his hand to Bucky, who was watching him warily from the train. “Let’s find out.”

Bucky went to him and the moment he stepped through the doors they shut neatly behind him with a click. The train pulled away; a normal New York subway and then it was just another day on a rush hour platform. The crowd jostled around them impatient and normally Bucky hated to be around this many people but now he felt he could almost cry with relief at how normal it all was.

In silent agreement, they made their way up through the stairs and then they were on the sidewalk. It was a sunny day and Bucky wished he still had a cap to pull down over his eyes. Around them, the city heaved with sounds and smells and people. 

“It feels real, doesn’t it?” Steve asked and then he looked down to where a little girl had emerged from out of the crowd and was tugging at his wrist.

“Excuse me,” she said politely. “But are you Captain America?”  
  


“Uhm, yes,” Steve said, shooting a helpless look over at Bucky. “Can I help you?”

“Can I get a picture with you?” the little girl asked, holding up a phone in a hot-pink case.

“Oh Kathy,” said a harried looking man pushing a stroller with a wailing baby. “Don’t bother the man, honey, I’m sure he’s busy.”

He was looking doubtfully between Steve’s black eye and Bucky, as if he wasn’t sure that this wasn’t some kind of ongoing arrest they were interrupting. Bucky stepped back into the shadow of the building, feeling suddenly very exposed.

“No, no,” Steve said, covering his embarrassment so easily that Bucky can tell he’s used to it. “It’s okay. Go ahead.”

Watching Steve smile for the camera, Bucky felt a sudden certainty that this was the real world. It was too normal, too mundane to be anywhere else. Already he was starting to become more aware of how hungry he was, how bone tired. Steve was back to playing the all-American hero but where did that leave Bucky? It occurred to him suddenly, that this might be the right point to slip away into the crowd. He had gone to find Steve and he had found him. The mission was complete.

As if sensing the way his mind was turning, Steve looked over. He was being perfectly polite to the kid and her parents, but Bucky could see the anxiety behind the smile, the carefully hidden impatience. Steve had always hated this part of his role.

Not everything changes, Bucky thought.

When Steve had finally made his excuses and detached himself from the family, he walked over to where Bucky was leaning in the shadow of a wall. He was smiling but it was a little unsure, like it wasn’t quite safe yet to be happy.

“Pleased to be back?” Bucky asked and Steve shook his head, looking faintly dazed.

“Happy you stuck around,” Steve said, and Bucky’s heart gave a funny sort of thump in his chest.

Bucky opened his mouth to say, I’m not going anywhere I told you but then he’s cut off by the sound of a phone ringing. Their heads swivel in unison to look. It was coming from an old and empty phone booth next to them on the sidewalk.

Bucky tensed up and when he glanced over at Steve he saw the same fear reflected on his face.

“Think that’s for us?” Bucky asked.

Steve looked at the ringing phone for a moment and then he walked over and picked up the receiver. He listened for a moment and then the worry cleared from his face, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

“Yeah,” he told the person on the other end of the phone, talking softly. “Yeah, I’m alright. He found me.”

Whatever tracker was embedded in Steve’s suit must have activated; Bucky realized. He wondered who it was on the other side. Maybe Romanova or Wilson, judging from the way Steve was talking.

Steve was smiling into the phone now, saying, “I can’t go into it now but tell Stark to get a quarantine around the area. It’s dangerous. I’ll fill you in later but uh, there’s something I need to do first.”

He glanced over at Bucky who thought again, _I should go_. Once again, he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why.

“It’s good to hear your voice too. I’ll check in soon I promise,” Steve said and then he frowned. “Hey, before I go. What day is it?”

His eyes widened and then, with a final goodbye, he hung up.

“They don’t want you back right away?” Bucky asked, edging closer. People were passing by and occasionally they would squint over at Steve in recognition. It wasn’t safe to be out her in the open but still, Bucky lingered.

“Nat will cover for me,” Steve said and then he cleared his throat. “So uh, what now?”

Bucky opened his mouth and then suddenly Steve blurted out, “Don’t go okay? I mean, I can’t force you to stay and I don’t want to make you do anything. And I know that things were different in that town and I don’t want to assume anything but-“

“Come home with me,” Bucky said, cutting him off. At Steve’s wide-eyed look, Bucky winced and then tried again. “I mean. I could show you my place.”

Steve looked at him for a long moment and then he swallowed and said in a strange, tightly controlled voice, “That would be nice.”

Bucky’s place isn’t far but he’s not about to go waltzing right to it with Steve in uniform so he leads them to it through a complicated back alley route, at one point utilizing a fire escape and several rooftops. Neither of them talk, and Bucky has enough time to silently go over in his head all the reasons this is a bad idea.

Every time he catches sight of Steve at his side, all his logical arguments stop making so much sense. 

They enter his apartment through a well placed window and it’s not until Bucky’s feet are on familiar wooden floor that it comes crashing down on him that it’s real, that he’s home at last and what’s more, _Steve is there with him_.

Steve was looking around with barely hidden curiosity. There wasn’t much to see: a tiny kitchenette, a table and chair, the bed in the corner with the blankets Bucky had found at Goodwill. It looked anonymous, almost unlived in.

“It’s uh,” Steve started and then couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

“It’s a dump,” Bucky said flatly and then he hesitated. “But the view is pretty good. At night.”

Steve walked over to the window and looked out. The sun was low in the sky and the golden light caught in Steve’s hair, his eyelashes. Bucky watched him and realized he was holding his breath. When Steve turned around, he had a look on his face that was so open it was hard to look at him directly.

“Thank you,” Steve said, stumbling over the words. “For showing it to me.”

Bucky heard the unsaid, _thank you for trusting me_ , and nodded.

There was a still, charged moment where neither of them spoke, looking at each other from across the room.

Bucky couldn’t be sure who moved first, if it had been him stepping forward or Steve reaching out but either way something shifted and then they were grabbing at each other, kissing each other with a kind of desperation.

Maybe it should have been slower this first time, or more gentle. _After all,_ Bucky thought with thrill of disbelief, _they had time now,_ _they had all the time they wanted._ But maybe they had both been waiting for it too long, because when they started it was hard to slow down or even form thoughts beyond, _yes_ and _more_.

They managed to make it to the bed without falling over but it was close, and Bucky didn’t know whether it would have been possible if not for Steve’s enhanced sense of balance. Neither of them could seem to stop kissing or look away from each other long enough to see where they were going. Steve kissed in the same way he fought; with an intense and serious concentration, as if he was making a mental map of Bucky’s chest, his mouth, the soft skin of his neck. He touched Bucky so carefully and with such intent, it was as if he was checking off a long and carefully kept list.

Bucky had none of his patience; he felt clumsy with desire, overwhelmed by the feeling of being touched. He held on too tightly, forgetting to breath. At one point he bit Steve’s lower lip and for a moment he worried it had been too hard but Steve just groaned and if anything, got more enthusiastic. Bucky was relieved then, for the Super Soldier serum, he felt in that moment that he could tear Steve apart he wanted him so badly.

The only thing that slowed them was the process of getting naked. It was a more complicated process than it should have been, partly because Steve was right and his armor was a bitch to remove, and partly because Steve kept stopping to ask Bucky if he was alright.

After the third time, Steve pulled away to ask him, Bucky snapped, “Look, I’ll tell you if I’m not ok?”

“Okay,” Steve said, straddled over him on the narrow bed. “I just don’t want to hurt you accidentally.”

Bucky laughed then, because the idea that after all he had survived, he could be hurt by Steve of all people, was ridiculous.

“You don’t have to be careful with me,” he said. “I won’t break.”

Steve’s eyes went soft and almost sad and when he had kissed Bucky, he said, “I’m not worried about breaking you, asshole, I just don’t want to _hurt_ you.”

“You won’t,” Bucky told him, feeling suddenly very serious. “You couldn’t.”

But Steve took his time undressing him anyway, his mouth hungry for every piece of skin that was uncovered. He kissed his way across Bucky’s chest, his waist, the crease at the top of his thighs. Very carefully, he kissed the knotted scar tissue at the place where the metal arm fused into flesh and Bucky had to look away and work very hard on trying to choke down the sudden lump in his throat.

It was overwhelming, all of it. The feeling of bare skin against his after so long going untouched. The care Steve was taking with Bucky’s body, which had been for so long a functional weapon at best and a painful burden at worst. Most of all it was overwhelming to have Steve here with him, after years of wanting it and thinking about it and telling himself he couldn’t have it. Overwhelming for Steve to want him back, just as badly.

Bucky withstood the gentle treatment for as long as it took for Steve to have him naked and strip off himself and by then Bucky was too riled up to be careful anymore. He flipped them round so that he was the one on top, leaning down to kiss him. From here he could keep himself up with the metal arm and it felt right like this, like he could shield Steve from the outside world like this, keep him safe under Bucky where he belonged.

When Bucky reached down to take Steve in hand, he was stopped by a touch to his wrist.

  
“Is this okay?” Bucky gasped, hair falling in his face.

“Yes,” Steve said quickly, cheeks flushed and eyes very dark. “God, yes but if you do that then this won’t last very long.”

“That easy huh?” Bucky asked, grinning and against all odds, Steve got somehow redder.

“Fuck off,” he said, and Bucky laughed, because he loved it when Steve got like this, frustrated and foul-mouthed. Admittedly it had never been in these circumstances before.

“So what, you not up for multiple rounds?” Bucky asked, feeling excited at the prospect. After the decades of dormancy, his sex drive had woken up with a vengeance it seemed.

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve said quickly, looking a little dizzy at the prospect. “God, Bucky yes, it’s just I-“

“What is it?”

“I can’t shake the feeling,” Steve said, looking suddenly very vulnerable. “That this is all just too good you know? This is…this is everything I ever wanted. What if…what if this is all just some sort of twisted wish come true and I’m still lying under that damn tree?”

“You think I’m gonna what, turn into a zombie at any moment or something?”

“Well hopefully not right now,” Steve said and looked down at where Bucky’s hand was wrapped around his dick.

Bucky huffed out a laugh and kissed him and when the kiss ended, he stayed close, talking into the curve of Steve’s neck.

“I told you before,” he said. “This is real. I’m real. I’m not going anywhere.”

As he said it, he knew the reverse was true. Steve had seen the worst parts of him, seen parts of Bucky that even Bucky didn’t know about. And still Steve hadn’t given up on him.

“You know I love you don’t you,” Steve said. “I think maybe I’ve always been in love with you.”

“I know,” Bucky said and kissed his neck. “Me too.”

He didn’t know what to add; the truth was so simple and obvious, so he just nudged Steve and said a little desperately, “Can we get back to the sex now?”

Steve gave a snort of laughter. “Are you that desperate?”

“Yes,” Bucky said honestly. “In my defense I’ve been waiting for this since 1934.”

“Well, I’ll have to make it good then,” Steve said voice suddenly hoarse and low, making the hair on the back of Bucky’s neck stand up.

From the second that Steve touched him, it was all Bucky could do not to cry out, he was so eager for it. Steve’s hands were large enough to wrap around them both. There was no grace to it, no elegance and Bucky was so out of his mind all he could do was squirm and try not to die. Steve kept kissing him through it and when he wasn’t, he was whispering things in that same hoarse voice, things like, _God, Bucky this is so good, you look so good,_ and _this is so much more than I imagined,_ and sometimes just _I love you_. Bucky wanted to say things back, tell Steve that this was amazing, miraculous, everything but the only thing coming out of his mouth were noises, fast and breathy.

He managed to say Steve’s name just as the wave crested and it was on his lips as he came, shuddering apart in Steve’s arms. Steve came just after, eyes fixed on Bucky’s face.

* * *

“I like your apartment,” Steve said much later that evening, when they were lying wrapped around each other and the sweat had started to become less sexy and more uncomfortable. “But you need a bigger bed.”

“You gonna buy it for me?” Bucky sniped, feeling to comfortable to lift his head from Steve’s sweaty chest to glare.

“Sure. And better sheets.”

“What’s wrong with my sheets?” Bucky said, relishing the rumble in Steve’s chest when he laughed.

“Nothing,” Steve said happily. “Nothing at all.”

Bucky lifted his head up finally to look down at him. Steve’s hair was golden on the pillow and he was looking back with a dorky kind of open joy on his face.

He was, Bucky thought matter-of-factly, still the most beautiful thing Bucky had ever seen. Even after all this time.

Bucky kissed him, softly to make up for all the biting, and when he pulled away, he asked, “How long were we away for anyway?”

“A week,” Steve told him. “Nat told me things were getting frantic.”

“They’ll probably want you back soon,” Bucky said, looking down at the patterns his fingers were making little patterns on Steve’s chest.

“Probably,” Steve admitted. “But they can wait. We have time to make up for. You hungry?”

The muscles around Bucky’s mouth hurt a little from smiling; he still wasn’t used to it. But that was okay. He would get better with more practice.

“Yeah,” he said. “I could eat”. 


	8. Epilogue: Three Months Later

For once, Bucky got to the rooftop before Steve. Once that would have worried him, or made him paranoid but things had changed a lot over the last couple of months, so instead, he just sat down on the edge to wait, enjoying the breeze on his face. It’s a warm evening and the sun is beginning to set. The neighborhood windows caught the light, warm and golden. Bucky was more used to it now, this strange modern city but he still liked moments like this, when it felt just like the place he had grown up.

A lot of things had changed about this place but not the crime rate, which was almost reassuring. You would think that the looming shadow of the Avengers Tower would deter criminals, but in the last couple of months Bucky had broken up enough local crime gangs and small-time robbers to know better. It wasn’t alien invasions or government conspiracies but there were other smaller evils in the world; extortion rackets and hate crimes and husbands who liked to get drunk and hit their wives. It wasn’t high profile, what Bucky did these days, but that was alright. He liked it better this way anyway, working in the shadows. Even so, he had started to accrue a reputation. They didn’t call him the Winter Soldier; they just knew him as someone who would help.

Sometimes Bucky worried that it would draw attention, break his cover. But even if it did and various government agencies came knocking, it would be ok. He and Steve would work it out.

In the twenty minutes it took for Steve to finally show up looking flustered, Bucky had eaten half of the pastrami sandwich he had brought with him.

“You started without me?” Steve said with mock outrage, sitting down next to him and reaching for the bag. They sat close together these days, even in public, shoulder to shoulder.

“Shouldn’t have been late,” Bucky said with his mouth full. “You’re lucky I didn’t eat yours.”

Steve rolled his eyes, smiling, and took a bite. “It’s good.”

“Needs more mustard,” Bucky said happily. It still felt like a novelty to have opinions on what food tasted like. Hell, it was still a novelty to actually be able to taste it.

As they ate, Steve caught him up on what had been happening up at the tower. There was some new global threat on the rise that they were looking into and on top of that everyone was angry at Stark for arranging another team photoshoot without telling them. This, Bucky was learning, was a pretty normal sort of thing to happen.

“Natasha says hi,” Steve said with seeming casualness. “She wants to meet.”

Bucky nodded, looking at his sandwich. “Okay.”

“Really?” Steve asked, surprised. He had been hinting around this for a while now and was probably surprised not to have to fight harder for it.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, chewing thoughtfully. “I think maybe it’s time. Not right now though.”

“No,” Steve agreed and then his face grew more serious and he paused, looking like he was choosing his next words carefully.

“So…something else came up today.”

“What?” Bucky asked cautiously.

“White Oaks,” Steve said and when he saw the expression on Bucky’s face, he held up his hands to reassure him. “No, it’s all fine, nothing bad has happened. We just… we found out what it is.”

“Huh,” Bucky said slowly. “So what? All of Stark’s testing finally came through. What was it? Some kind of biochemical gas leak? Magic?”

“Alien,” Steve said flatly and Bucky’s eyebrows shot up.

“Alien?” he echoed and Steve nodded. “As in, made by aliens or some kind of crashed site?”

“No, as in the place itself, White Oaks is an alien,” Steve said, looking as though he was struggling to understand it himself. “Thor was the one to find out. Apparently the Asgardian libraries are pretty extensive but it took a while because until now everyone thought that species was extinct. It must have landed on Earth a long, long time ago, long enough to root.”

Bucky shuddered, remembering the roots vividly. “So why did it draw you in? Why all the nightmare shit?”

“Thor described it as a kind of symbiotic creature. That it feeds on psychic energy and kind of reflects it back on the environment.”

“So this thing eats your brainwaves and in return all your nightmares come true? Bad deal,” Bucky said, scowling.

Steve shook his head. “That’s the thing. Thor said usually that the creature is benevolent. It usually feeds off large communities where the cost is spread far enough that it doesn’t affect any individual negatively. It doesn’t give back nightmares, it would normally just change the environment slightly and usually in insignificant ways. Flowers blooming the wrong colors. More sightings of mythical creatures. Maybe luckier coincidences than in other places. Thor said most communities that play host to these creatures see it as a good thing. A blessing.”

“So what went so wrong with this one?”

Steve shrugged. “I guess everyone left the town. It got hungry. Desperate. And when it had me, all of that energy was too concentrated.”

“Maybe it was lonely too,” Bucky said softly. He paused and then a thought occurred to him. “Why you? Why reach out for you of all people?.”

“Well,” Steve said, looking suddenly awkward. “Thor says it might have been because of all the time I spent under the ice. I was trapped there for seventy years. Maybe the creature thought we were the same. Maybe it felt me dreaming all that time.”

“Do you remember?” Bucky asked. “What you dreamed about?”

“Some of it,” Steve said and then he looked over at Bucky and smiled. “They weren’t all nightmares.”

Bucky thought about that for a moment, what it must have been like to be trapped in your own mind for so long, and then he leant over to Steve and kissed him. It wasn’t a very long kiss but it said what Bucky couldn’t.

“So what then,” Bucky said when he pulled away, “If it’s a living creature you can kill it right?”

“No,” Steve said, looking almost affronted. “Well, yes, technically but we didn’t. Thor found a way to remove it. Send it home.”

“God magic?” Bucky asked dubiously.

“God magic,” Steve said, shrugging. “It’s just another ghost town now.”

“Good,” Bucky said and took another bite. “You want to uh, go visit or something?”

“Not really. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “Closure?”

He had been learning a lot about closure lately, from a very nice and discreet lady Steve had put him in touch with. Bucky had a feeling she might be on the Avengers payroll, if only from her utter inability to be fazed by even the most insane parts of what Bucky tells her each week.

Steve smiled but shook his head. “I think I’ll be alright. I’d rather be in New York.”

“You’d rather be in my apartment getting laid,” Bucky said smugly, and Steve goes pink, even though that’s how they’ve been spending the majority of their time lately.

“Maybe,” Steve said primly and then he looked over, grinning. “Speaking of which, you finished eating?”

“Yeah but you haven’t.”

“I’ll eat on the way, c’mon,” Steve said and he got up, holding out his hand.

Bucky took it and when he was on his feet he said, “You know, you never asked me.”

“Asked you what?” Steve said lightly, not letting go of Bucky’s hand.

“What was under the mask.”

Steve’s face stilled for a moment and then when he spoke, it was very carefully.

“I didn’t know…if you wanted me to know,” he said. “Do you _want_ me to ask?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t mind but I thought you should know… it wasn’t my face.”

“No?” Steve asked, frowning. “What was it then?”

“Nothing,” Bucky said simply. “There was nothing there at all.”

Steve looked like he was thinking about it for a moment and then he nodded. “I guess I’m not surprised. It wasn’t you.”

“No,” Bucky said. “I don’t think it ever was.”


End file.
